


tell me when (you're gonna let me in)

by dreamrecurrentdreams



Category: Sense8 (TV), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Healing and Character Growth, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soul Bond, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2019-12-26 15:11:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamrecurrentdreams/pseuds/dreamrecurrentdreams
Summary: Grace Hargreeves died on a Tuesday night the way a star died in space, surrounded by darkness as her core collapsed in on itself and her lifetime flashed before her eyes in one brilliant burst.She was beautiful like this, she thought to herself. She was more beautiful than Master Hargreeves would ever know because she had set her children free at last.(known also as the au where the umbrella academy was never raised by reginald hargreeves as adoptive siblings but grew up leading separate lives only to become telepathically connected as adults. a story about saving the world and themselves in the process)





	1. and *** said let there be light

**Author's Note:**

> since sense8 and the umbrella academy both feature diverse casts of characters coming together under extraordinary circumstances, i thought i'd try writing the umbrella academy into the storyline/universe of sense8 :) 
> 
> the premise of sense8 is that 8 strangers around the world become psychically bonded to each other as a unit. within their 'cluster', the 8 can experience one another's surroundings and lend each other their skills and knowledge, which becomes necessary in their efforts to take down whispers, the one man familiar with their abilities who sees them as the trigger to destroying the world, rather than saving it. as this fic mirrors the plot by casting the umbrella academy as the cluster and reginald hargreeves as whispers, please note there will be spoilers for sense8! every chapter, i'll link clips from the show that are parallel what's happening in the fic.  
> to start off the fic, [ here's a link to the sense8 trailer ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKpKAlbJ7BQ). 
> 
> please enjoy!

Grace Hargreeves died on a Tuesday night the way a star died in space, surrounded by darkness as her core collapsed in on itself and her lifetime flashed before her eyes in one brilliant burst.

She was beautiful like this, she thought to herself, as a chill crept into her body. She was more beautiful than Master Hargreeves would ever know because she had set her children free at last.

Beside her, Phinneus brushed tears off her face.

“I can see them, Pogo,” Grace whispered to him, and he took her hand. “They’re beautiful.”

And they were, because she could call them her own, as they materialized before her one by one in snapshots through time and space.

Her heartbeat pulsed in sync with the footsteps of Number One. He was searching for someone, his eyes scanning his surroundings as he moved through cluttered alleyways. The moon above was bright and she drank in the sight of the slope of his broad shoulders, the curl of his large hands, the glint of his badges pinned to his chest. As his gaze met hers, she took a breath to call out to him

And breathed in time with Number Two. Pressed close to a wall, Number Two was tense, his body like a coiled spring. He reached for one of his sheathed knives and Grace understood how the hard metal of the blade sang to him. But he had a softness to him -- the softness of his dark eyes underneath his domino mask, the softness of his lips shaping silent words to himself. And when he locked eyes with her in the abandoned living room, he mouthed “Mom?” and she smiled at him, as radiant as

The shine of the spotlight trained on Number Three. It was turn for her character to monologue and she lifted her head high to rise to the occasion, becoming her role and ready to meet every challenge: she would be unafraid, paying no heed to the cameras trained on her, and she would be collected, exuding a composure that would only crumble when she looked directly at Grace, who looked back 

Into the starry-eyed expression of Number Four, as he swayed to the rhythm of the music thrumming throughout the club. A mass of limbs and glitter thronged across the dance floor but Grace only watched Number Four and the sweep of his eyelashes, the arch of his neck, his tattooed palms turned towards her. He was adrift in a sea of ecstasy and bodies, but as the eye contact he made with her was surprisingly grounded. “Oh,” he breathed, an exhalation that rustled like

The papers scattered onto the carpet of Number Five’s bedroom. Dressed in only boxers and a binder, Number Five exhaled as he pressed the needle of a syringe into his thigh. When he laid the syringe on his bedside and looked up, Grace mapped out the sharp angles of his jawline and the furrow of his brow. He was preoccupied, she sensed, but when he saw her, a look of almost childish wonder crossed his face like 

The sun crossing the sky, illuminating the upturned face of Number Six. He looked at peace like this, bare-chested and basking in the dawn of a new day, and Grace noticed what seemed to be a network of dark sinewy lines on his forearms shrink back from the light. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and focused on her, unwavering 

Like the form of Number Seven seated in a stairwell. Number Seven, whose features were cast into shadow. But Grace knew her, knew the quiet leanness of her frame, the wisps of dark hair tucked behind her ears, the violin case propped on her lap. Number Seven tipped her heart-shaped face towards Grace and asked, “Who are you?” Grace only raised a finger to her lips

And she returned to the darkness, lying on the floor of the church she had come to die in. “Take care of them for me, please,” she said to Phinneus and she felt, rather than saw, his nod.

“Good night, my dear,” Phinneus said. “Sleep well.” Then he was gone too, just as the doors of the church swung open. 

Grace no longer had the strength to lift her head so she listened instead to the clack of polished shoes and the tap of a cane as Master Hargreeves approached.

“You’ve become a mother at last,” he said as he loomed over her. “My congratulations to you.” And then for the first and last time in her life, he lowered himself to her level, kneeling beside her. “Now, tell me where the children are.”

Grace looked into his face and saw her own reflection in his monocle. She smiled one last time and her reflection smiled back.

Then she no longer was. 

Reginald Hargreeves pressed two fingers to her limp wrist and clicked his tongue when he couldn’t detect a pulse. He stood up once more.

“Take her body away,” he told the young man behind him. “We have more work to do.” 

“With pleasure,” Harold Jenkins replied. 

 

____________

 

That night, Luther Morgenstern dreamed of the woman.

In his dream, he had found her seated on a bench in front of an art exhibit, humming as she dipped a needle in and out of the fabric pooled onto her lap.

“Who are you?” he asked. “I’ve never met you before, but it feels like I’ve known you my whole life.”

“Why, my dear, I’m your mother,” the woman said.

Luther paused and looked at the woman. She was blond, just like his mother was, but while his mother had crow’s feet etched into her worn face, the woman had dainty features and porcelain skin. “You’re not the woman who gave birth to me,” Luther said slowly.

“That’s true,” the woman said and smiled. She had a nice smile, Luther thought. “But I did give birth to the connections between you and your siblings.”

“But I’m an only child.”

“You’re never as alone as you think you are, Luther darling.” At this, the woman put down her needle. “I’m only sorry I can no longer be with you and your brothers and sisters. But I’ll always be watching over all of you.”

Luther stared at her. “What do you mean, you can’t be with us anymore?” The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

“I’ll always be watching over all of you,” the woman repeated but her voice was farther away, slower like the paintings slowly melting onto the walls, like her eyes slowly dimming, like the art museum slowly fading into darkness. “Remember.” Her body crumpled and Luther couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, could only lunge in to catch her, ice flooding his veins, hoping to God he wasn’t too late God she can’t be dead she couldn’t leave him he didn’t want to be alone anymore.

And then he was awake, gasping for breath, his chest heaving and hands scrabbling for purchase against the bed sheets.

He was crying, he faintly realized, as he blinked through streaming eyes. Crying for a woman he had never met, his body contorting with grief and racked with sobs. With some effort, he managed to sit up but he felt like someone was squeezing his heart in a vice grip, squeezing tighter and tighter with every second.

No, he needed to pull himself together. He wouldn’t be of use to anyone, including himself, if he didn’t calm down. 

He inhaled and exhaled in one billowing breath. And then another. And then another, until he fell into a consistent rhythm. 

He was in his room. Outside his window, a train rattled past on the tracks. The Green Line, his mind helpfully supplied, operating at the early hours of the morning. He glanced at the alarm clock by his bed and grimaced at the time. 3:24 AM. He had only been asleep for two hours.

Come to think of it, everyone else should’ve been asleep at this hour -- but as the sounds of the train dissipated into the distance, he found instead that he could hear swells of music, growing louder and louder as time ticked on.

Orchestral music. It should’ve sounded nice, but with his heart stuttering inside his chest and his head pounding, he wasn’t in a state to appreciate any of it.

It must be coming from his neighbor’s room. He stumbled out of bed and made his way into the hall, wincing as his shoulders banged against the doorway.

Luther rapped his knuckles against his neighbor’s door. “Hello, it’s your neighbor. Room 701. Would you mind turning your music down, please?” There was no response. If anything, the music grew louder. His headache too was growing worse.

Luther gritted his teeth. Why couldn’t people make more of an effort to be decent and considerate human beings? He knocked on the door again, calling out, “Open up, it’s the police!”

No response again. He looked around, making sure no one else could see him, and sighed in resignation. Then in one swift movement, he grabbed the doorknob, rammed his shoulder against the door, and barged in.

The door nearly splintered under the force of his body but remained intact, thankfully. What was fraying was his patience for the whole situation as he surveyed the place and realized not a single person was present. He scrubbed a hand across his face. Where the hell could be the music coming from then?

_____________

 

Vanya Sokolov’s violin had always been her anchor. Even in the rare moments when her mind wandered during rehearsals or performances, going through the motions of dipping her bow across her violin’s strings kept her rooted to her body, to her bones that soaked in the sound, to her very core.

It was very rare, though, for her to be distracted like this. Then again, this time was different than all the others. For one, she’d never experienced such a vivid vision. The woman who appeared in front of her felt real, from her painted lips to her pearl necklace to her luminous eyes. The woman’s emotions were real too, palpable enough that Vanya had felt a mirrored sorrow and love sitting heavy in her chest.

She hoped the woman was all right but she knew better than to believe her hopes would manifest into reality and to allow fantasies to linger on for more than they should’ve. The woman had had an air of finality to her. But at the very least, it hadn’t been a tortured finality. Vanya understood that much, what it meant to make peace with letting go.

The melody tugged at her. That’s right, she should focus again on her violin and on the rehearsal. It was a little too late, though -- the Conductor made one slicing gesture and the orchestra fell silent. He lowered his hands and peered into the orchestra, his eyes honing in on Vanya for a moment. Vanya knew this look well. The Ah-Yes-You’ve-Disappointed-Me-Yet-Again look. Her heart sank as the Conductor cleared his throat and said, “We’ll have to work on following the sheet music more closely for next time. Focus is key, everyone. We can’t afford for there to be any weak links at this stage. Rehearsal dismissed, see you all on Friday.”

The orchestra scattered, musicians shuffling as they packed away their instruments and slid their sheet music back into their folders. Vanya tucked her violin into its case and snapped the lid shut. If the orchestra couldn’t afford to have weak links, she couldn’t afford to linger and chat with the others.

As she began heading towards the exit, she bumped shoulders with Helen Cho. Instinctively, Vanya took a step back and ducked her head in apology.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Helen’s shoes. They were nice shoes, shiny beige high heels. It made sense for a polished First Chair to wear polished shoes. Just like it made sense, Vanua supposed, for her to wear her battered sneakers.

“Do you want to say it’s all right, that there’s no problem?” came Helen’s voice from above. “I could say it’s all right but I wouldn’t be holding you accountable for your mistakes causing problems for the people around you. And we wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we?”

“No,” Vanya said and wished she could disappear.

“Good,” Helen replied curtly and then her heels were shifting out of Vanya’s vision.

Vanya only lifted her head once the coast was clear. She willed her hands to remain steady as she reached into her pocket to pull out her pills and pop a couple into her mouth.

By now, almost everyone had left the stage. Vanya slung her violin case across her shoulder and began walking towards the exit. But her movements were slow, weighed down by a growing loneliness.

The woman from her vision had been kind to her. The woman hadn’t said anything, had only lifted a finger to her lips, but her gaze had been warm and she had looked into Vanya’s eyes like Vanya meant something.

Vanya was alone and missing a woman she had never met before in her life. What a lonely state of affairs to be in, she mused and continued along her way. 

___________________

 

Allison Summers, regarded by People, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair to be one of the up-and-coming stars of the movie industry to look out for in 2019, was supposed to know her next lines.

But as soon as the woman had appeared out of thin air in front of her, Allison’s mind had gone blank. She had only a moment to process the expression on the woman’s face, and then everything else dissolved into white noise - the other actors, the set, the camera crew. She had moved instinctively, her body turning towards the woman, and in a voice she nearly didn’t recognize, she called out, “Wait! Don’t go!”

Then the words “Cut! Cut!” had rung out into the air and the woman had disappeared as if she had never been there. And of course, she hadn’t.

Nothing was real in her life. Nothing would ever be, Allison thought dully, as she watched the director approach, his perpetually gleaming face stretched now into a cordial look of concern, while her other cast members lounged around, casual enough to be within earshot but played off like they were minding their business.

“Allison, Allison,” Kit sighed, clapping a hand onto her shoulder. Allison fought the urge to shrug his hand off. “Baby, what’s going on? We’ve got a story to sell, and this scene is what’s either going to make or break the fantasy. Everything - the delivery of your lines, your verbal and body language, your chemistry with the rest of the team - needs to be perfect in this part.”

'You need to be perfect' went unsaid.

Without breaking eye contact with Kit, Allison smiled coyly. “I’m so sorry, Kit,” she said and looked at him from underneath her lashes. “I promise it won’t happen again. I hold myself to a very high standard and any failure on my part is just as unacceptable to me as it would be to you or anyone else. I’m ready for another take, if you are.”

Kit clucked his tongue in sympathy. “Oh Allison honey, I know how committed of an actress you are. You’ve been fabulous in your time with this project, a couple mistakes could never take away from that. I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.” He paused, then leaned in and licked his lips nervously. “Listen, Allison, I’m invested in the wellbeing of all my actors and actresses on all my movies. And well, I know that you’ve been going through some pretty serious familial troubles lately. So I understand if that’s been on your mind. If you ever want to, you know, talk about it --- “

“I appreciate it, Kit,” Allison said and smiled even more widely. _Play the part, if you play it well enough, you can bend reality any way you’d like, you just have to fake it. _“Thank you for looking out for me, that’s so kind of you. I’ll be alright. I try to keep my personal life and professional life separate so I can always do my best work on set. I’m really ready to do a second take if that’s OK.”__

__Kit tittered nervously. “Well, that’s all right. Thank you for allowing me to check in with you. You know that I’m here for you if you ever need anything. Go get yourself a drink of water then, we’ll be doing take two in a moment. ”_ _

__Only when he turned away and strode towards the camera crew, rattling off a list of instructions did Allison let her hands fall to her sides. A series of crescent moons had etched themselves into her palms when she’d dug her nails in. She looked at her nails now, clean and immaculate. The last time she had nail polish on was a month ago, when she, Claire, and Patrick had still lived together. Claire had insisted on using Allison, rather than Patrick, as her nail polish model because Patrick fidgeted too much and never let his nail polish dry properly; very primly, Claire had explained to Allison that not painting Daddy’s nails didn’t mean boys couldn’t have nail polish because “Mommy, you always said that girls can do everything that boys can, so boys should be able to do everything girls can!”_ _

__Allison looked away and swallowed back the lump in her throat, discreetly tucking her hands back into her pockets._ _

__In hindsight, it made sense why she’d been so drawn to the woman who appeared to her; in that moment, the woman had looked at Allison with a expression of tenderness and longing that had spoken volumes in ways words couldn’t._ _

__And really, Allison would understand better than anyone else because she knew that was the exact look she wore whenever she spoke to Claire on the phone these days, post-divorce and post-losing custody._ _

_______________________ _

__

__It seemed that no matter how much time passed, Ben Yi would never be free of his family. He cracked his neck and stared at the polished glass doors. Transparent, for a corporation far too successful with far too clean of a slate to not arouse suspicion. Transparent, for a businessman whose only scandal had been taken care of with little ado, large amounts of money, and the suppression of a taboo existence._ _

__The editor-in-chief owed him big time for this assignment, he thought to himself with a vicious sort of satisfaction as he looped his own press pass around his neck and pulled open the set of glass doors, walking into the pristine office._ _

__The secretary smiled at him from behind the front desk._ _

__Caught off guard, he smiled back at her. “Hello, I’m Ben Yi, writer from the Seoul Times. I’ve been assigned to write a cover story on Park Industries and I made an appointment asking to interview with Chairman Park or his associates -- “_ _

__“Yes, we know who you are,” she replied very sweetly. “In fact, Chairman Park insisted he personally handle your request for an interview.”_ _

__Ben felt a surge through his body, cold and murky like the ocean, and knew without needing to check his wrists that his veins were darkening. He tried to tamp down his mounting dread. “Is he here then? I’d appreciate the chance to speak with him in person.”_ _

__“He’s away on business, unfortunately. But he asked me to convey a message to you and made it clear that these words needed to be said out loud to you.” The secretary leaned forward and Ben could see the sickly sheen of her lip gloss. “He wants you to know that you’re not welcome here and you should’ve known better than to approach him. He has no business with bastard children. You’ve shamed him and tainted this establishment by coming here.”_ _

__The monsters under his arms and his stomach writhed. They wanted out. He wanted out. He never asked for this. To be born like this. To be born in the first place._ _

__“That’s harsh of him to say,” Ben said quietly, as the monsters roared, straining against his skin. “Wouldn’t it look bad for the public to know a businessman as renowned as him refuses to show mercy or compassion to his own child, even one born in different circumstances?”_ _

__The secretary leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over the desk. “I’ve delivered Chairman Park’s message in full but I believe I speak for him when I say Chairman Park is a respectable businessman whose entire career was nearly jeopardized by the actions of a single inconsiderate woman. It’s natural that he would want to place distance between himself and….all of this.”_ _

__“Don’t,” Ben said, and drew in a single breath. “Talk about my mother like that. You could never know what she went through. And my father will never either, ever since he left my mother and me to fend for ourselves.” He bowed stiffly to her. “I think I’ve gained as much out of this conversation as I could’ve. Thank you for your time. Tell Chairman Park that in my line of work, the truth will always emerge. He can count on it.”_ _

__He left then, without looking back, shouldering his way past the glass doors. The elevators were there but he didn’t think he could stand to be in an enclosed space, not when he was like this._ _

__Instead, Ben found himself ducking into an unlocked closet, after checking that no one else was around, and sinking to the floor. The darkness soothed him. Even in the times he couldn’t admit it to himself, the dark made his body feel at home because there had and would always be a place from him there._ _

__The woman from his vision too had been born out of the darkness. Earlier in the morning, Ben had gone out to the balcony of his apartment to enjoy the morning air but when the tangle of tentacles inside of him had tugged for his attention, he had opened his eyes to see a woman stepping out of the shadow. She was beautiful, like an angel, and she had seen Ben’s exposed chest lined with wriggling veins and she hadn’t looked away._ _

__Perhaps for that reason, she reminded Ben of his mother._ _

__He felt a twinge and then winced. He’d had a headache since seeing the woman. No doubt the confrontation at Park Industries had worsened things. He leaned back against the wall of the closet and exhaled again. He’d collect himself for a moment before sorting everything out. Just one more moment._ _

________________ _

__

__Like most days -- that is, every day that ended with a y -- Klaus Hoffman woke up with a pounding in his head. He moaned and flung an arm over his eyes, rolling over with his back turned to the window as sunlight streamed through the room. Good Lord, he’d been busy yesterday. Not that he believed in a Lord or any capital G or lower case g higher powers, especially given any aforementioned deities had abandoned him long ago._ _

__He was getting ahead of himself. Right. He needed to make a step-by-step list because Narcotics Anonymous was all about that._ _

__Step one, handle the headache. Step two, take a bath. Step three, go to work._ _

__Klaus pressed his palms against his eyes and breathed. This headache felt different from the other ones. He could list them on his fingers if he wasn’t so busy applying pressure to his eyelids to stop his brains from leaking out of his skull - headaches from drinking, from snorting coke, from shooting meth. No, this was different, he realized, because the headache had begun not when he woke up in the morning but last night when he saw the woman._ _

__Which was odd in and of itself, because the ghosts always went away when he ingested whatever the selection of the day or night was. But she had appeared and was possibly more present than Klaus was in that moment. Klaus might have dismissed her as an anomaly, a stray ghost that had drifted into his conscious past the barriers he’d put up, but she didn’t bear any signs of death. No gaping wounds, no clouded eyes, not even the clammy, cold pallor of skin that all dead people had. If anything, she had felt warm. She had looked at him and he had looked back at her and warmth had bloomed in his breastbone and he had smiled at her giddily at their mutual recognition of an intimate encounter between strangers._ _

__Was she a stranger? His memory was fragmented, had been for a while now. It was hard to remember, with so many people coming and going into his life. The ghosts. The dealers. The dancers. The johns. The riders._ _

__His focus was ebbing, though, re-centering itself on the sound of rain coming from outside, the splashing of droplets against pavement and the rumbling of faraway thunder. A moment later, Klaus sat up with a jolt. How could it be storming when he had woken up to blinding light? He slipped out of bed and wobbled towards the window, pressing a hand to the glass as he took in the sprawling sight of Cape Town, lit by the glow of the sun high in the sky._ _

__But the sounds of the storm remained. If he strained, he could almost feel chilled droplets slipping down his neck, dripping from his knuckles, clinging to his eyelashes as he tried to blink them away._ _

__Klaus shook his head with a wry smile. Must be his subconscious telling him to hop into the bath. As he slipped out of the mesh shirt and the metallic skirt he had fallen asleep in from yesterday, he snagged a pair of headphones on his way to the bathroom. Drowning out unwanted noise had always worked for him._ _

__________________ _

__The rainstorm had hit Diego Reyes hard. After taking care of the robbers that had broken into a home and freeing the hostages, he had felt fatigue settling into his body and took his leave despite the grateful family insisting that he stay for the night._ _

__And he was tempted. He took it upon himself to uphold his mission of serving and protecting in the capacity that he could but when he was man enough to admit it, it wore him down to the bone. And it was moments like these, watching the husband envelop his wife and his children in his arms, that he realized how alone he was. So maybe it would’ve done him some good to stay in the company of others but then he’d just become another mouth to feed and another body to house as an outsider to the tight-knit family unit._ _

__So he’d turned down their invitation to stay as politely as he could while running on fumes and then when he started walking home in the night, following the trail of streetlamps, it began to rain. And tonight, when it rained, it poured._ _

__Diego shook his head, scattering water droplets everywhere. His sweater was sticking to his skin, his leather harness was chafing, and he had a throbbing headache, one where splashes of color would bloom across his eyelids every time he blinked water out of his eyes. It was bad enough, he thought to himself wryly, that he didn’t have to worry about being on guard from any potential assailants because no one else would be foolish enough to venture into the night with such a heavy downpour._ _

__So by all means, Diego should’ve been irate, on edge, frustrated at the very least. He had been burning the candle at both ends for long enough that it took very little for him to blow a fuse._ _

__But seeing the woman had changed everything._ _

__Diego tended to have a clearer memory of his forays into the night because of how the adrenaline rush honed all of his senses. He had conditioned his body to be like a predator, wired to mark his targets and capture each and every detail necessary for the hunt. So he especially remembered the sight of the woman materializing into the same space as him, and how he had reacted to her by lowering his guard, which he could have never done in front of a stranger._ _

__But she wasn’t a stranger. She looked nothing like his mother and yet he found himself calling out “Mom -- ” to her, because every fiber of his being was drawn to her the same way he had gravitated to his mother when she was still alive._ _

__The woman, like his mother, smelled of fresh laundry and the earth. Her crisp blouse and skirt were spotless but the soft steadiness that she carried herself with matched his mother’s, from the warmth she exuded to the resolute set of her shoulders. And she smiled at him like his mother did, eyes crinkling at the corners, and he had felt wholly loved by her and filled in turn with the fierce desire to love her in turn, to protect her._ _

__And then she had disappeared and all the air in his lungs vanished for a moment, even though he didn’t need to breathe with his abilities._ _

__Diego had to remember then that he had a current task and commit to completing it from start to finish but now, as he made his way home, he thought of her. He didn’t understand why it was that he felt this strongly about her but he was sure that he needed to meet her and that just as he would look for her, she would be waiting for him._ _

__Or maybe not. Because his mother had gone away from him and Eudora too and it was neither of their faults, it was his fault and his alone that he wasn’t strong enough to protect either of them._ _

__His fists curled. That’s right, he had a mission. He couldn’t think about the woman, as much as he wanted to, as long as Eudora’s killers were still on the loose._ _

__In the darkness, in the rain, his head unbowed, Diego plunged into the night._ _

__

_________________________ _

__

__Five Sykes had learned a long time ago that he could only trust himself to handle his own matters competently, whether it be selecting his own name, choosing his own cohort of trusted associates, or having an emergency supply of aspirin and coffee available to him at all times._ _

__He placed one pill on the tip of his tongue and washed it down with a generous gulp of coffee. If nothing else, he could always take solace in the fact he alone knew how to make coffee exactly according to his preferences, brewed rich and black and intolerant of any imperfections._ _

__What was not exactly going according to plan was this god-awful migraine, stabbing into his temples. But it was fine. Five specialized in assessing and responding to unexpected outcomes. Arguably, the ability to do so was embedded in his very genes - from the moment of birth by a mother who had not been pregnant to a childhood bouncing around in a foster care system all while he was learning to bounce around time and space to now._ _

__So he could handle this new development, of a woman materializing out of nowhere into his bedroom and disappearing the next moment._ _

__At the time, he hadn’t sensed any danger. And it wasn’t that his sense for danger was faulty; if anything, he had escaped far too many crises, thanks to his innate reflexes, to be questioning his abilities now. But rather than the absence of danger, it was the presence of safety that had caught him off guard._ _

__The woman had made him feel safe, which was unusual considering a) he never felt safe around anyone but himself and the people he had deemed safe only after conducting necessary evaluations of their motives and backgrounds, b) the woman had caught him during a T injection, one of the most private moments he kept only to himself, and his instinct had not been to reach for the gun in his bedside drawer but to meet her gaze squarely. And in the few seconds she and he had shared the same space, there had been a mutual recognition that transcended any bond two strangers should be capable of having._ _

__Five wanted to know her and what this was all about. While he had seen far too many peculiar things in his lifetime to doubt the existence of ghosts or spiritual apparitions, his gut feeling told him there was far more to the situation than that._ _

__He slid into his office chair and cracked his knuckles._ _

__“Buckle in, Delores, we’ve got some answers to find.”_ _

__Perched on the desk in her position of honor, Delores hummed in satisfaction. 'You look like you're having fun.'_ _

__

__

____

____

__“It’s the thrill of the hunt,” he told her, and fired up his desktop. The five screens arranged in a semi-circle around his desk flickered to life. Five reveled in the sound of whirring machinery for a few self-indulgent seconds, then set to work._ _

__“Visions,” he typed into the database. “Psychic connection.”_ _

__Then he paused, chewing on his bottom lip. “Superhuman,” he added._ _

__Search entries began to pop up. Five clicked the first one._ _


	2. i know you (you're next)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promised myself i'd write a new chapter to post every week -  
> and a month later, here we are!  
> thank you for your patience in the meantime.

All things considered, Klaus hadn’t been doing too terribly at his job. Gainfully employed for four months (and counting!) and none of his passengers had died yet. A smashing success really, if he did say so himself.

From the driver’s seat, Klaus patted the side of the Mystery Machine affectionately. The Mystery Machine had been his ride or die, from her original form as the battered car that anchored him during the nights he felt himself drifting too far from shore, to her present form as the source of income he crowned as his new queen the night he had emerged from rehab and promised the one ghost he couldn’t see that he was going to try to make things right again.

Also, it always amused Klaus to no end to be a driver of a minivan from a show about debunking the existence of the eccentric and the paranormal.

According to Prince, the only reason the Mystery Machine had yet to sustain any bullet holes was because she was such an eyesore that she instantly blinded every gang member unfortunate enough to stumble across her path.

“If they were blinded, doesn’t that mean they would shoot willy nilly and put even more holes in her?” Klaus had mused, only for Prince to jab an accusing finger at the van and holler, “Who the hell would paint a beautiful girl with such ugly colors? A man with bad taste, that’s who!”

To which Klaus would bat his eyelashes and purr, “But babe, I thought you liked me!”

Prince would then always sigh. “I suppose that makes me a man of bad taste too, eh?”

From the seat behind Klaus, Prince leaned over to snap his fingers in front of Klaus’s face. “Time to go, Klaus, we’ve got no time to have our heads in the clouds.” He jerked his head back, towards the passengers in the back. All of who, Klaus would like to add, were patiently waiting because they knew that while Klaus drove like a man with one foot in the grave — which was patently untrue, he was a man who had been wholeheartedly flung into the graveyard without so much of a say in the matter — he would deliver all of them to their destinations without fail.

“Oh, my head’s screwed on just fine. Or as fine as one’s head can be screwed onto their body. Not screw in the sexual context, of course, I’m not even sure how that image would work.” Klaus took in Prince’s look of consternation. “Anyways, what I meant was that I was just lingering for one last moment because we still have room for more passengers. See?” And he gestured to the woman who was approaching the Mystery Machine with a chicken tucked under one arm.

Prince clicked his tongue. “Ag, Klaus, how are we supposed to run a business like this?” Still, he slid open the door. “Headed to the city center, ma’am?”

The woman ducked her head as she climbed up into the van. “Yes, please.” Klaus watched with amusement as she then proceeded to bundle the chicken into Prince’s arms. “I don’t have much money, but this chicken should do the trick, no?”

“Ma’am,” Prince said and was consequently smacked in the face by one of the chicken’s wings. Klaus smirked. “You expect me to make change out of a chicken.”

“You’ll figure it out, young man! What, you want more? Then I’ll give a warning that’s worth your while. The Superpower Gang is in the area again. Best to watch out for them.”

Klaus hummed. He had heard the rumors too of the new bullies on the playground, except the bullies had baseball bats as hefty as their egos and pistols that triggered as easily as their tempers.

As the woman took her seat, Klaus leaned over to ask, “If this gang’s out and about, what makes you want to ride with us?”

“I have a good feeling about you,” she replied. “And my intuition is never wrong.”

___________________

 

Ben had just managed to collect himself when a chicken landed in his lap. Or at least he thought it was a chicken; in the darkness of the closet, it was difficult to make out its exact features so he could really only guess from the sound of squawking and what felt like ragged feathers slapping at his face.

Ben didn’t scream, of course.

He just uttered a manly cry. And also happened to fall backwards. And also incidentally knocked over an array of cleaning supplies, sending miscellaneous items — again, too dark to see what the hell everything was — clattering to the floor.

But the time he had picked himself back up again, the chicken had presumably vanished.

_Great going, Ben. Just fantastic. You’ve really peaked here - turned away by your father, who didn’t even have the goddamn decency to reject you in person, so you had to hide in a janitor’s closet to go and lick your wounds. And now you’re fucking hallucinating chickens now._

There was clearly no symbolism in the fact Ben didn’t want to come out of the closet and was conjuring chickens from his imagination. None whatsoever.

When he got out of this mess, he was going to give the editor-in-chief a piece of his mind. For as long as he’d been working under her direction, he’d respected Chief Min for recognizing his commitment to pursuing truth at any cost and for assigning him the projects that challenged him to dig deeper, push harder for stories that hadn’t seen the daylight in far too long. But sending him to interview his father’s company when not even she understood the absurd circumstances of his birth was too far. What was it that she’d said? That he could mobilize his connections? Bullshit. His father had made it clear from the moment he was born that any connections to his mother or him would sully his one and only priority of the corporation.

Ben shifted his weight to sit on his haunches, readying himself to stand when he heard voices outside, close enough for him to hear when he pressed his ear to the wall.

“You’re headed home now, Mr. Sang?”

“Not today. I’ve got a special assignment again to accompany Chairman Park tonight.”

Ben stilled his breathing and sank further into the shadows, letting his imagination paint the picture of the two voices. A secretary and a security guard, both young, based on the polite language of the woman whose voice had been clearly pitched to sound pleasant and accommodating, and in contrast, the swaggering intonation of a man who could only be trying to throw his weight and prove himself.

“Mm, you work too hard. How are you going to be able to enjoy life if you’re working all day and night like this?”

“Well, I have you, don’t I?”

Ben rolled his eyes. He apparently had neglected to include ‘forbidden lovers’ in his assessment of the two, but of course, that was going to be the only kind of people sequestering themselves in a hidden hallway tucked this far from prying eyes.

There was a soft intake of breath. “Seong-jae, you know we aren’t allowed to date in our current positions. Us meeting like this is risky enough as it is.”

The man scoffed. “It’s just the two of us here, Seo Yoon. Besides, Chairman Park would be one to talk.”

The woman grew quiet. “Please be very careful about what you’re saying. If you’re suggesting anything improper about the chairman—”

“Seo Yoon, the chairman’s having me escort him to officetels at odd hours of the night. You must have some idea of what this means, and how unfair it is for us to be punished for dating when he can get away with all of this.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Sang, and for both your sake and mine, I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of what you just said. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The sound of clicking heels faded with distance, leaving a silence that was instantly punctuated with the sound of the security guard swearing under his breath. After a moment or two, he must have left too because there was only the sound of silence now and the pounding of Ben’s heart.

Ben leaned back, his head knocking against the wall.

Approximately a year ago, he had covered a story on the development of officetels popping up in Seoul, small offices located on the back of corporate buildings that sex workers disguised as their homes in the daytime and sold on the web as spaces for clandestine visits in the nighttime in an attempt to operate outside of the government crackdown on prostitution.

Which meant a breaking story on the prestigious chairman of Park Industries frequenting the illicit makeshift red-light district was imminent.

It also meant his father somehow had the time to visit prostitutes but not the time to reconcile with the wife and son he had sent away.

Bringing his pointer finger to his mouth, Ben bit down on the skin of the joint, hard enough to draw blood. Well, fuck Park Kang-Dae and fuck the corporation he had chosen over his own family. Justice would be hot on his father’s heels and Ben would see to it personally that he was the one to finish the man’s career off.

He smiled grimly. Time to get cracking.

___________________

 

For a moment, Vanya felt the copper tang of blood fill her mouth. She swiped a thumb over her lips, expecting to see a familiar smear of red but finding none.

What was it her shrink had told her the other day? That she had a proclivity to distort the world around her in ways that didn’t map onto reality. Proclivity, he had said flatly, and looked at her from his horn-rimmed glasses with his colorless eyes. For all the big words he used, Doctor Brandt had an extraordinary way of making her feel small. Like Helen Cho. Like the Conductor. Like everyone else.

For a long time, Vanya had thought she hadn’t minded feeling small. She’d liked it, even, enough to have moved to London six years ago. But somewhere along the years, smallness had become suffocating, like skin stretched too taut over her body. But she didn’t know how else to exist. She might never, she thought to herself wryly, as she instinctively stepped to the side next to a cafe to make way for a laughing throng of tourists who naturally ignored her as they passed by.

Of course, the minute she’d discerned the coast was clear and begun walking again, someone collided into her. She stumbled back and the other person grabbed her arms to steady her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled and looked up to see a young man, chagrin written all over his features.

“I just spilled coffee on you and you’re thanking me? If anything, I should be the one apologizing to you.”

Ah, she hadn’t even noticed.

She stared down at the dark splashes on her jacket, then at the man as he fished napkins out of his pockets and began to dab at the stains, all while stammering out a stream of apologies.

When he next met her eyes, he blinked in surprise. “Are you OK?”

“It’s rare for people to apologize to me,” she said without thinking and the man’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, if any of those people have also spilled coffee on you, you deserve an apology from them too.”

If nothing else, the man at least sounded sincere. Vanya tried to smile at him but her face felt stiff. “My violin’s in one piece so I’ll live. ”

The man looked at the violin case slung over her shoulder and then back at her face. Horror and what appeared to be recognition dawned on his features. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I spilled coffee on you of all people,” he moaned.

“Me, of all people,” Vanya repeated slowly, as if the phrase was from a foreign language. And it might as well have been, because she had never once heard someone say such a thing to her.

“Yes, you! You’re Vanya Sokolov from the Amati Orchestra, aren’t you?”

Vanya stared at him. Showing concern to her after spilling coffee on her was one thing; recognizing one of the rank-and-file second violinists seated in the back row of an amateur orchestra was another. “How do you know me?”

“I was at your last concert,” the man replied cheerfully. “I’d been wanting to learn how to play an instrument for a while so I thought I’d go experience an amateur orchestra to see what kind of music people can make at that level. And I felt really inspired when I saw you performing.”

The man must have seen Vanya’s expression because he smiled sheepishly. “No, I’m being serious here. Even if you were in the back, I noticed you because of how immersed you were in the performance. You were so connected to the music you were playing, you know? Like the world could fall apart and you’d still be up there playing and I’d be glued to my seat, watching you the whole time. So after listening to you play, I feel like I know you, even if we’ve never met.” The man laughed suddenly, nervously, and shook his head. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I must’ve weirded you out, huh?”

“No, I know exactly what you mean,” Vanya said, and thought of the beautiful woman with kind eyes who had made her feel like she wasn’t alone anymore. Maybe the woman had been a sign that better things were to come. “Thank you for listening to me play. That’s... kind of you to say.”

She hesitated, looking at the man’s guileless expression. He hadn’t made her feel small like all the others. He was different. Trustworthy. “You said you wanted to learn how to play music, right? I teach violin lessons. Maybe I could... Teach you, if you were interested?”

The man’s face lit up and he reached out to clasp her hands. “That would be amazing! Thank you, thank you so much, that’d be a dream!”

Vanya smiled at him again but it felt more natural this time. “We can talk about the details of what a violin lesson with me would look like, if you have the time.” She inclined her head at the cafe the man had just left. “You can buy yourself another coffee in the meantime since you spilled your first one.”  
“I’ll buy you coffee too. My treat.” He squeezed her hands once before letting go. His eyes were bright. “My name’s Leonard, by the way. Leonard Peabody.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Leonard.”

Leonard moved to open the door and winked at her. “You’re just saying that because I’m paying for your coffee. And paying you, once we figure out how lessons with you are going to go.”

“You’re not wrong,” she replied and stepped into the cafe. She winced under the abrupt harsh glare of fluorescent light, then froze at the sight of rows of faded gray lockers lining the walls, the sound of shouting and scuffling feet in the distance.

“Is everything OK?” Leonard called out from behind her.

The lockers and the bright lights vanished at once, replaced now by wooden tables and a warm glow that infused the entire coffee shop. When she listened, she could only pick up the background noise of quiet conversations and the churning of the machinery behind the counter filtering through.

“Just fine,” she replied and pressed a hand to her neck, willing her heartbeat to slow down. “I’ll go find us a table.”

___________________

 

Diego had just stripped off his undershirt when he heard a throat clear behind him. He pointedly ignored the sound, reaching now to unbuckle his belt.

“Cut the shit, Reyes, you know why I’m here.”

Back still turned to the voice, Diego pulled the belt from the loops of his jeans. “The fuck I do, Beaman. Why the hell would you follow me into the locker room?”

“Because you wouldn’t listen to me otherwise.”

Diego slid out of his jeans and tugged on a pair of boxing shorts. “So you had to corner me while I’m taking my clothes off to get me to talk. You must be real proud of yourself, huh?”

“The shameless one is you for breaking in and disturbing a classified crime scene and stealing key evidence on your way out. I have every right to arrest you, clothes on or off.”

“It’s not stealing if I was going to return it later,” Diego retorted, shoving his clothes into the locker and slamming the door shut. “And if you’re going to arrest me, do it after my match.” He turned around to stare Beaman square in the eyes, only to find the other man goggling at him.

“Is that,” Beaman said very slowly, “a nipple piercing?”

Diego was going to kill him. God help him, he was going to lose it and throttle his coworker with his own bare hands because the man didn’t have enough fucking sense to know when to back off and it was a goddamn miracle Diego hadn’t snapped earlier after three long years of Beaman pushing all of his buttons—

Beaman apparently still had an inkling of self-preservative instinct left in him because he cautiously took a step back and raised his hands. “OK, OK, I’m sorry, I got distracted. You would too, if you’d been working with a guy on the force for years and only now learned this new side to him.”

“Well,” Diego spit out, “maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

At this, Beaman’s expression grew tight. He dropped his hands to his sides and matched Diego’s gaze evenly. “Yeah, I don’t. And I’m trying to give you a chance to explain yourself, before it’s too late. Because the officer I worked alongside and the man who came to earn my trust and respect would’ve never done something as dishonorable as this.”

This was exactly why Beaman pushed all of his buttons, and Eudora too, and he hated them. He hated them and their sincere righteousness and how hurt, how disappointed they were by the idea that people weren’t as good as they had thought. He hated them because he had been exactly like them, and look at where that had gotten Eudora and him. And Beaman was going to end up the exact same way if he didn’t learn from their mistakes.

So Diego opened his mouth and said, “I don’t give a damn about earning your respect,” and told himself resolutely he was only doing what was right. “If you’re still talking shit like trust and respect to people outside the law who are never going to reform their ways, you’re in the wrong line of work and you should leave while you still can.”

“You know what’s the worst thing about all this?” Beaman asked suddenly. “You’re not as a bad person as you make yourself to be, Diego. You’re not as alone as you think you are, and you’re not the only one who lost Eudora that day. So quit acting like you’re all of those things, hand me the evidence, and we’ll figure this out and find justice for Eudora. Together.”

Ice pooled in Diego’s stomach at the word together. She had said the same thing too, before she had gone and died on him. “No, we won’t,” Diego said. “This is my battle to fight. You got that? Only I get to bear this cross because it’s my fault she’s dead. You don’t have the right or responsibility to interfere.”

He walked away without turning around to see if Beaman was following him.

It was for the best, he told himself. This way, no one else would have to die.

The man Eudora had died trying to rescue had said the same thing.

Sito Vargas, age forty-three, driver for Ignacio’s Towing, had been identified as a victim of abduction, after his elderly neighbor had heard the sounds of a struggle and rushed in to find Vargas’s house in disarray.

Eudora and Diego’s unit had been called in. At the time, Diego had been away on a different case, tracking down the cartel members responsible for the bloodbath in Tlalpan the other weekend. Eudora radioed in to tell him that she was going to go ahead now, that the report had said the bloodstains on Vargas’s floor were still fresh and that she couldn’t let this chance slip out of her fingers.

On the other end, Diego had told her to wait. Just hold on for a little longer, he had said, and like he had suppressed his stammer years ago, he stifled the pain his voice now, quashed the burning sensation of the bullet wound in his side. I’ll be there soon, I’ll have your back.

I know you will, she had replied. You always have. But I can’t let him disappear like all the others. You know I can’t, corazón.

And then she had gone after Vargas and she had made it far, successfully tracking Vargas’s abductors to a run-down motel in Magdalena Contreras, because she was damned good at her job but she didn’t make it far enough because for as damned good at her job as she was, she was unstoppable with Diego at her side. But he hadn’t been there that night and the masked pair had gunned her down and Diego had played the video footage saved to his computer on repeat, memorizing every detail from the make of their guns to the tailoring of their suits.

And only last night, he had picked up new video footage of Sito Vargas. After the vision of the woman, he had wandered restlessly until he was seized with the urge to dig deeper, push harder for the truth that had been buried along with Eudora. Before he knew it, his feet had taken him to the doorstep of Sito Vargas’s home and his head had told him to search Sito’s bedroom because secrets were best raised in the intimacy of darkness.

Diego had found a USB wedged in the underside of a bedside table and snuck it out into the privacy of his own room, where he plugged it in and found a single video.

Sito Vargas, age forty-three, driver for Ignacio’s Towing, had looked into the camera and said, “I think I will soon be dead or gone, and that will be for the best, because I don’t want anyone else to have to die.” He said some more things too. That it was his fault that some of the others had disappeared. Said he wished he had been never connected to them because they would’ve still been alive if it wasn’t for him. Said he wished he had ignored the visions he’d had of them.

In the darkness, facing the glow of his computer screen, Diego had swallowed and felt his heartbeat rising in his throat.

____________

 

In the darkness, illuminated by the glow of computer monitors, Delores peered at Five with concern. _You should rest. How long has it been since you’ve slept?_

Five leaned back and folded his arms. “You know I’ve got more important things to do than sleep. My body can’t afford to be any more inefficient than it already is.”

Whenever he entered one of these deep dives, time always seemed to slip away from him. It suited him too -- the feeling of being suspended in time and space, leaping from point to point, his atoms assembling, disintegrating, recomposing according to his will and his alone.

And it made the weight of having a human body all the more suffocating and grating. He was capable of folding himself in and out of space-time continuums and yet he had to respond to the mundane demands of a human vessel like hunger and sleep.

_And you know nothing is more important to me than your wellbeing. Even the brightest of stars burn out eventually._

Five looked at her. OK, so he’d had to accede to the obligations of living as a human person like hunger, sleep, and others caring about him. He might not be willing to budge on the first two items but he’d come around in regards to the last one over the course of learning the hard way there were a select few people who did actually have his best interests at heart, contrary to all logic and reason. Like Delores.

He reached out to squeeze her hand. “Fine, I’ll take a break after going through one last forum. Just for you, OK?”

Delores’s blue eyes softened. _Thank you._

Five opened up the next page and scanned the thread. He’d sent a brief message to the Anons servers to crowdsource more information and one of his contacts had sent back an archived post, posted in 2001 and set to delete one hour after its initial creation, according to the timestamp.

 

_re:// VISIONS AND TELEPATHIC CONNECTIONS: THE EVOLUTION OF HUMANKIND_

_posted by: asclepiusascending_

_guys I’m putting my life on the line right now just by posting this but I can’t stay silent anymore after the shit I’ve seen._

_so picture this: I’m fresh out of college with a degree in bio and neuroscience and looking for a job and out of the blue this professor I’ve done research with hooks me up with this organization called BPO that’s been looking for researchers to help out with their human genome project. cool, I think, seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. also the salary is great and BPO gets funding from the feds, the United Nations, you name it. this is the real deal._

_and it felt almost too good to be true. and I didn’t want to jinx it at the time but you know fucking what? I should’ve gotten the hell out as soon as I thought to myself a dream job like this had to have a catch too._

_but no, I was hired. they had me sign all the paperwork, sat me down and told me I was going to monitor test subjects._

_I walk in on my first day and there’s a crying girl strapped to a hospital bed._

_like, HOLY FUCK guys. this girl can’t have been more than twelve years old._

_and the guy supervising me looks at me and says, “I know this looks bad but we’ve restrained her temporarily for her own protection.” it turns out she’s been developing “abilities” that’s been putting on a strain on her body. BPO studies evolved humans like her to decode their genes, find answers for why they turned out the way they did. Literally in his words, “It’s our responsibility as scientists to see what potential this group of people could have for the future of humankind. We’re pioneers in this field.”_

_my job is to visit her and check on her vitals and ask her a list of questions to track her growth. I calm down. OK, this makes sense. I can do this. And it’s true the next time I see her that she’s just chilling on the hospital bed._

_so I do my job. and I get to know her over the next couple weeks or so. She’s just like any other little girl, except the fact she’s been having visions of other kids. They’re not ghosts, she says. They’re real people and she can feel what they feel and see what they see. And this could all be little kid talk except she has powers and she shows me one day she can make small earthquakes. I give her a glass of water and she touches it and it just. Explodes. I swear to God I’m not making this up. She says the others have powers too._

_I ask her if the other kids have families and she says some of them do, yes. I ask her if she has a family and she says she can’t remember. What’s her last name? She can’t remember that either. Her head’s been foggy so all she can hold onto is our conversations and the visits from the other kids. at this point, alarm bells are ringing in my head._

_and then she disappears. Supervisor says she had to be moved to a new facility because her condition destabilized. I don’t buy it so I call in sick._

_in the past day, I’ve been putting two and two together. I think I’ve been working for an organization that’s been abducting people with “abilities”. possibly drugging them since she couldn’t remember any identifying information about herself. I don’t know what happened to her but having a kid with her powers in the hands of this organization can’t possibly end well. This is illegal, unethical shit and if they’ve been keeping it under wraps, I’d catch hell for trying to expose them._

_I think they’re onto me. I can only call in for sick for so long and I have the feeling that if I quit, bad shit’s going to go down. So I’m going to have to go back and pretend like everything’s normal. All I can do is really report all this undercover. This is going to be deleted soon, but for anyone who’s reading this, save it and spread the truth like wildfire. I trust this is going to land in the hands of the right people, who can expose BPO for what it really is._

 

Five leapt up to his feet. The sudden movement would’ve started the normal person but Delores watches him serenely; too often, she’s seen him struck by lightning revelations, the electrifying knowledge of the dark underbellies of the shiny, plastic world coursing through his body, setting the gears of his mind into motion.

He teleported with a flash to the pinboard by his closet. when he’d first started as a hacktivist, he’d started writing down all his theories on the walls of his room. They’d filled in over a decent chunk of time, expanses covered in swirling blue ink, so he’d had to order sets of pinboards in waves to continue his project of connecting the pieces over the years.

On this pinboard, dead center, he’d scribbled BPO: BRANCH OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE? and pinned newspapers clippings of the prestigious figures present at BPO conferences, government budget summaries of funds funneled to the organization, marked maps of all their offices and correlated suspicious disappearances of individuals and groups who’d been gaining influence in the area.

He’d been trying to tell people for years the Biologic Preservation Organization was a respectable scientific front for a global system of social monitoring, control, and suppression and they’d only dismissed the truth as a crazed conspiracy.

Five now reached into his pocket to take out the notebook and pen he always kept inside. Tongue slightly protruding, he wrote HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION? on one page and tore out the sheet to pin the board.

Taking a step back, Five folded his arms and narrowed his eyes at the figure at the center of the board.

The austere portrait of Reginald Hargreeves, renowned billionaire, entrepreneur, recipient of a Nobel Prize, and founder of BPO, stared back at him unflinchingly.

“You’re next, Hargreeves,” Five said out loud. Behind him, Delores only hummed.

___________________________

 

Luther kept the missing poster of Sara Patrell in his desk drawer. It had become worn down because of how often Luther had folded and creased the sheet of paper in fits of restlessness. By now, he would take out Sara’s poster from time to time to look at her photo but he had memorized the printed words a long time ago.

MISSING! SARA PATRELL. DOB: 10/01/1989. MISSING SINCE: 09/30/2001. RACE: WHITE. HAIR: BLONDE. EYES: BLUE. HEIGHT: 4’6”. WEIGHT: 80 LBS. MISSING FROM: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.

Behind him, he heard a gusty sigh. Without turning, Luther said, “What now, Chedder?”

He could almost hear the other man’s mustache bristling in indignation. “Hey now _Luther,_ I thought we’d agreed to use first names. You don’t see me going around yelling for a Morgenstern now, do you?“

Luther tucked Sara’s poster back into the drawer and turned to his partner at last with crossed arms. “I’ll start calling you Dale as soon as you stop hassling me about this.”

Dale shook his head. “Luther, I know we’ve been over how neurotic you are, but this is borderline obsessive. Scratch borderline, straight up obsessive. She’s been missing for what, eighteen years now? And you’re still trying to solve a cold case just because she has the same birthday as you.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t understand,” Dale repeated and looked heavenward. “You’re treading on thin ice, bud. Don’t forget I’m the only one in this department who has the patience and energy to put up with all your weird shit.” He jabbed an accusatory finger at Luther’s chest. “You’re making me go on patrol with you to visit an abandoned church because you had a vision. C’mon, who does that?”

“You’re going to have to trust me on this, Dale,” Luther said, trying to meet Dale’s look of blistering skepticism squarely. “I’ve got a gut feeling about this. You know as well as I do how important instinct is in our line of work. That’s why we work as well as we do together. Because I trust you have my back just like I have yours.”

As expected, Dale folded like a deck of cards. With a huff, the man held up his hands up in a sign of surrender. “OK, big guy, you got me. Damn you and your pep talks and your puppy dog eyes.”

“I do not have puppy dog eyes,” Luther protested, even as he stood up to shrug on a jacket and step out of his cubicle.

“Uh, yeah, you do,” Dale tossed back. “Although I have to wonder why with baby blues like that you haven’t gotten lai—”

“Talk a little louder, will you?” Luther hissed and shoved at Dale, hustling him out the door. He felt the prickling gaze of the other squad members on his back for only a moment before they were out in the parking lot.

Smirking, Dale sauntered over to a squad car. “Well, to make it up to you, I guess I’ll settle for being the driver then.”

Luther, being the bigger man— literally and figuratively — ignored Dale’s jibe. Ever since they became partners in the force, Dale hadn’t stopped making fun of the fact Luther drove like “an eighty-year-old lady with arthritis who had lost her glasses” in his own words.

Dale patted his shoulder. “OK, so you had a vision of an abandoned church and somehow managed to locate it to Chicago. You actually know the address?”

__________________

 

Allison was in her dressing room one moment and outside a church in the next.

She’d just finished the final take for the day and Kit with a broad grin that stretched too tautly across his face had told her well done, all in a day’s work, let’s pack it in for the night and continue for tomorrow then, shall we?

She’d retreated to the dressing room while the other cast members left one by one for the night. She’d gotten along with everyone fairly well, was nothing but pleasant and charming to them on set, but when she saw the masked curiosity in their faces, that they could only see the tabloid headlines when they looked at her, she no longer felt any need to spend any more time with them than she had to.

So she’d curled up on a couch inside to wait for the noise outside to die down, staring at the blank ceiling above. Before, as soon as the day had ended, she always scrambled for her phone, to catch up on the flood of texts and photos Patrick and Claire sent her.

But there was only radio silence, a damning silence weighted with judgment and blame. She couldn’t go home now, not when she knew she would no longer hear Claire’s shrieks of laughter in the hallways, the sounds of clattering pots and pans that meant Patrick was cooking dinner in the kitchen. Home only had her and she no longer had the will or desire to try to fill the emptiness of the space with her own sound, not with all the damage she’d done with her voice.

With a shuddering exhale, Allison closed her eyes.

When she had next opened them, she was inside a car, looking through the dashboard window at the looming form of a dilapidated church.

In the driver’s seat, a mustached man unbuckled his seatbelt. “Let’s hope your gut instinct’s right, Luther.”

From the passenger seat, Allison stepped out of the car. And from behind her stepped out another man.

Luther, Allison thought, and felt a wave of inexplicable comfort wash over her at the sight of his silhouette illuminated in the sunlight. She had never met the man before, but as she looked up into his face, traced the lines of his sharp jawline, the furrow of his brow, she was overcome by the feeling she had known him all her life, a resounding swell of familiarity and warmth that left her blinking back a burning sensation.

She followed him as he approached the mustached man, standing at the front of the building.

“Keep an eye out for me here, Dale?” Luther asked, and the other man shot him a thumbs up.

Keeping his eyes locked on the set of double-doors, Luther straightened his posture. With one thrust, he pushed the doors open and set foot inside, Allison a silent presence next to him.

He hadn’t noticed her yet somehow, perhaps couldn’t even see her with how his gaze swept across the pews and the stained glass windows, but unconsciously as they walked into the church side by side, his movements began to mirror hers.

 _I know you_. Their footsteps echoed in the space. _I know you._ Their hands brushed against each other. _I know you._ Luther exhaled at the same moment as Allison’s, their chests rising and falling in tandem.

In front of them was a mattress.

Images flashed through Allison’s mind. A woman lying still on the mattress, her hands folded across her chest, with the kind and bright smile of a mother.

“This is it,” Allison whispered. “This is where I saw her.”

Luther turned towards her. For a moment, time seemed to come to a standstill as his gaze met hers, lit up with a shy recognition. He searched her features but he wasn’t looking at her the way everyone else saw her, a butterfly pinned to a display board where her life was a specimen of interest laid out in a glossy magazine spread for all to see. He looked at her softly, reverently, like she had hung the moon and stars.

He looked at her the way she had always wanted Patrick to look at her, and the realization brought a lump to her throat that she had to swallow back.

At last, Luther spoke, his words halting. “Did you know her?”

Allison shook her head. “I’ve never met her before in my life. She just—” She paused, trying to find the right words to describe what had happened. “Appeared in front of me and vanished the next, if that makes sense.”

“It does. I know what you mean.” Luther smiled at her hesitantly. “Do you live here?”

Allison smiled back. “I live in Los Angeles. But I don’t think we’re in L.A right now.”

“No, this is a church in Chicago. Have you ever been before?”

Before Allison could answer, the sound of a gunshot tore through the air and she whirled around as her surroundings began to crumble into thin air.

Luther’s wide blue eyes were the last thing she saw before she suddenly sat up on the couch. Heart hammering, she took in the beige walls, the vanity mirror in the corner, the glow of her phone screen on her lap.

Rationally, she knew the gunshot couldn’t have happened here but she found herself pressing a hand to her neck anyways, a cascade of grief surging through her.

__________________

9,967 miles from a dressing room in Los Angeles, Klaus fell to his knees with a sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i tried to find the church scene to link here but unfortunately no one's posted it to youtube ;-;  
> there is however a clip of the [ the chicken scene ](https://twitter.com/sense8/status/636532934204346368?lang=en) \- enjoy!


	3. limbic resonance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> up and at em! an update at last after three months - i can only hope this chapter is worth the wait :) as always, i'm grateful to all of you for reading.  
> tw for homophobic language in this chapter

They hadn’t shot Klaus but they might as well have.

It started when Klaus pulled up to the curb for Prince to slide open the van doors for a single woman waiting by the road.

In the moment Klaus had leaned over from the driver’s seat to greet her and found a frightened pair of eyes staring back at him, he had felt an icy dread flood through his veins, not unlike the touch of a ghost. Prince, with his keen intuition, had sensed the danger almost instantly, pulling the woman down onto the floor and yelling “Get down!” just as the gunshot went off and embedded itself in one of the van doors. Klaus ducked as another flurry of bullets rained down, one narrowly missing him and shattering the glass of the windshield.

With cries of triumph, the Superpower Gang came racing up from around the street corner, their guns cocked at the van. “Out, out!” they chanted, and with a look of resignation, Prince raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and stepped off the van. Klaus waited until all the other passengers had followed suit, thankfully all alive and breathing, before he too slid out.

“OK, motherfuckers!” the gang leader shouted. “Let’s do this real quick. Money, wallets, and food!”

The van now vacated, some of the gang members scrambled inside to check the seats while the others searched the passengers, nudging at their bodies with guns.

The leader rounded on Klaus. “Hand over everything you have, bitch!”

Naturally, because he could never resist the urge to play with fire to keep the chill of fear at bay, Klaus replied, “Only if you say pretty please.” The leader pistol-whipped him, sending him stumbling back. “Don’t be smart with me,” he hissed, and Klaus had to catch his breath to hastily respond, “OK, fine, message received, sir.” He pulled out his wallet and packet of weed to give to the man.

From behind him, Klaus saw another gang member tugging at the hand of an older woman, the woman who had given Prince the chicken when she had come into the bus. “Not the ring,” she whispered. “Please.”

The man only spat at her. “We are the Superpower Gang! We take whatever the fuck we want!”

Klaus swallowed, his heart heavy. Only this morning, the woman had declared she had full faith she would arrive at her destination safe and unharmed.

The gang leader saw Klaus watching. “That reminds me,” the man drawled softly. “You have something more to give to us, no?” He gestured to Klaus’s neck.

Dave. All the air rushed from Klaus’s lungs and he reached for the dogtags instinctively, a rising panic surging through his veins. “You can’t,” Klaus whispered. “It’s all I have left of him.”

Without breaking eye contact with Klaus, the gang leader smiled and leaned in to snap the dogtags off Klaus’s neck. Klaus clung onto the man’s wrists. “Please,” he said. “I’ll do anything, just don’t take him from me, oh God, please --”

The gang leader kicked at Klaus until Klaus let go. “Serves you right, fucking moffie. Go die and join your soldier boy if that’s what you want so badly,” he snarled before whistling loudly. “We’re done here, let’s go! ” The other gang members at the sound of the whistle leapt into their cars, driving off with loud whoops.

Chest constricting with grief, Klaus pressed his face to the ground, let his tears fall to the dust, wept. They had taken Dave from him and now he was alone. Alone, without the warmth of Dave’s body to wake up next to in the morning. Alone, without Dave’s steady presence to ground him, without Dave’s quiet and resolute love that made the whole world hurt less, made everything softer, kinder. Alone without Dave’s dogtags, without the imprint of Dave against his skin, the tender touch of Dave on him.

Klaus swallowed down the taste of ash and blood in his mouth. He had nothing. As in, he had nothing else to lose. As in, he only had himself and there was no question he would put himself on the line for Dave. He dug his fingers into the ground, pushed himself up with some effort. The gang members couldn’t have gotten far. And even if they did, he would track them down to the ends of earth and back, until he followed Dave in death.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Next to him, Prince was helping up the older woman, her ringless hand clutched to her chest. “You shouldn’t have ridden our van today, ma’am. I’m sorry that this happened,” Prince told her.

The woman shook her head, tear tracks on her cheeks. “My intuition is never wrong,” she replied, her face lined with resolve, and pointed to Klaus.

Prince whirled around, understanding dawning on his features at the expression on Klaus’s face. “Aikona Klaus, I swear to God -- “

“I’m going to get Dave back,” Klaus said calmly, and before Prince could stop him, shouted to the other passengers, “Anyone who doesn’t want to come with me, get off the van now!”

As people began exiting the van, Prince grabbed hold of Klaus’s shirt collar and pulled him in close. “Listen here, there’s no way in hell I can let you go alone to take on those skelms by yourself. Dave would never forgive me if I did.”

Klaus rested a hand on Prince’s. “You’ve got your wife and kids waiting for you at home. Neither Dave nor I would ever forgive myself if I dragged you into this.” He smiled crookedly at Prince. “I’ve already put you through enough to know you’re my ride-or-die so don’t you go thinking you have to prove yourself to me.”

Prince’s eyes shone as he moved to wrap Klaus in a tight hug. “You crazy boy,” Prince breathed. “You miracle worker, born in the apartheid to a black Virgin Mary. You and only you, I’ll bet on to win against the odds.”

“You’re the crazy one for believing in me in the first place, boet,” Klaus replied, returning the hug, before he finally stepped away. “Well, here I go. I’ll see you around, Prince.”

But when he hopped into the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirror, he saw the reflection of the older woman in the very back of the van.

“My husband gave me the ring 43 years ago, young man,” she said to him, unflinching. “I’m not letting go of him that easily.”

Klaus gave her a nod. “All right then, let’s go get the loves of our lives back.” Gripping the steering wheel, he gunned the engine.

___________________

Out on the balcony of her flat, Vanya listened idly to the sound of a roaring engine before it was whisked away by the wind. Even at this hour, so many people had places to be; they streamed down the sidewalks, their conversations swirling through the night air in notes of color; they flooded the streets with their cars and taxis and buses, weaving in and out of traffic in haphazard patterns of rumbling machinery, honking horns, and oscillating sirens; they filled homes, restaurants, shops with light and noise that spilled into the city, permeating the night.

Steeped in the sound of it all, Vanya sat in the darkness and thought of Leonard.

They had spent hours together in the coffee shop until evening had crept up on them - and for once, Vanya wished the day would never end, that she could bottle this moment, preserve the way Leonard made her feel.

She’d told him as much when he had walked her to the door and bid her good night and she’d on impulse blurted out, “Wait!” And then: “We’ve known each other for five hours, but I feel like you know me better than everyone else in my life right now.”

Leonard had smiled at her knowingly and said, “It’s a beautiful thing, human connection, when the rhythms of our bodies and minds fall into sync and when we become attuned to each other. There’s this phrase for it: ‘limbic resonance’. Or you can call it ‘empathy’ if ‘limbic resonance’ is a little too fancy.”

Vanya had smiled at him. “Well, I’m glad that out of all the people to have spilled coffee on me and shared this connection with, it was you.”

“You should smile more,” Leonard said suddenly. “You know, when I’m with you, I can just feel the light you radiate. You just have this … this pure, beautiful light inside you. But you keep it buried.”

And in that moment, the world shrank until it was only Leonard and her, reflected in each other’s eyes in the space they shared together. Vanya looked him, at how his gaze was locked on her and her alone, like she mattered. Like she was important. “No one’s ever said that to me before,” she said quietly. “No one’s gotten close enough to me, to try to see me or know me for who I am.”

Leonard had held her hands.“You don’t have to be alone anymore. You have me.” He squeezed her hands once before letting go. “And I don’t intend on leaving. I’ll see you later, then?”

“See you later,” Vanya had breathed out, just as he’d folded a slip of paper with his cellphone number into her hand and winked, and then he was gone, vanished into the night that she now sat and watched.

It was cold on a night like this but she only had to think back to the warmth Leonard’s eyes held for her, the warmth of the idea that she was not alone, separate from the life around her, and the city began to thaw before her eyes.

________________

Five jolted awake, covered in sweat. It was hot inside the room, almost stiflingly so.

He slipped out of the bed and padded over to the window, parting the curtains to see the sky tinged red by a sun that had yet to arrive.

_Go back to bed, Five._

“Can’t, I’m too restless.” Five drummed his fingers against his chest. He hadn’t expected to wake up feeling _things_ but here he was, a fierce longing burning inside of him. A longing that compelled him to suddenly want to leave the room, to go outside, to be with people. A longing, which did not and could not have come from him naturally, because the sentiment was misplaced and irrational.

He expressed all this to Delores, who only sighed as she scrutinized him.

_Perhaps your subconscious is trying to signal to you that it’s time to reconnect with your mothers. How long has it been since you last saw them?_

“Six months,” Five replied stiffly, folding his arms. “Which is completely reasonable, seeing that I’m an independent adult and I have my own affairs to take care of, two things they understand well as adults themselves. In fact, they should understand all the more since I’m no longer in their care and they now have sufficient time and energy to tend to their own matters.”

_You make it sound like you were a burden to them. But you weren’t, were you?_

“The task of looking after any child is burdensome in itself. I can only imagine what they had to go through to raise the likes of me, given that I was a difficult child who deviated in every single way from the conventional ideal of a son.”

_They adopted you, Five. They chose you. Is it so difficult to believe that they wanted to be your parents, that they derived enjoyment and purpose from caring for you specifically?_

“Delores, they adopted me because they’re meddlers and masochists with hearts too big for their own good. And they’ve been tolerating me for the past fifteen years for the exact same reason. I’m sure their quality of life has vastly improved since I left their household.”

_Is that what you truly think?_

Five didn’t answer, only turned his back to her. If he had called Andrea and Nalani meddlers and masochists, he might as well have called himself that for having taken Delores under his wing.

He had claimed her the day he stepped foot in their household. The home Andrea and Nalani had made together, to share for the rest of their lives, was filled with haphazard clutter, but Delores alone had caught his attention, a regal presence in a sea of junk. She watched him with a steady gaze, her hand outstretched as if to ask, “Well? I’m here in spite of everything and I don’t intend to back down. What about you?” In response, Five found himself lifting his head higher to meet her painted eyes.

“That’s Delores,” Nalani had said next to him and smiled when he turned to look at her. In the time that he had become acquainted with her, she had smiled at him disconcertingly often; everyone else who had ever smiled at him had done so either because they wanted something from him or had derived amusement at his expense, and he regarded her warily as she spoke to him.

Nalani, having either not noticed his reaction or chosen not to acknowledge it, had continued. “She’s been my muse for the past month or so. I found her discarded in the dumpster behind the department store, missing the lower half of her body and her other arm. But what she did have left was her pride. No one could take that away from her. So she sat there, day and night, enduring silently without giving ground.”

“That must have been hard on her,” Five said. His fingers curled into fists by his side.

“It was,” Nalani replied quietly. “But she’s home now. She has a place to call her own, where she’s valued and appreciated for who she is and what she’s gone through.”

And Andrea on the other side of him, silent the whole time had rested a solid hand on his shoulder and squeezed, and for once, he didn’t move out of reach.

After that, Nalani had insisted that Delores could use a friend and Andrea had hefted her into what was to be Five’s room, setting her down gently on his new desk.

Taking in the whole scene, Five had chewed on his lip and decided that his guardians either had no ill intentions towards him or were masking their ulterior motives with displays of benevolence. Of course, he would not let his guard down around them; but he also knew not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

That being said, he was cognizant that such compassion would reach an end sooner or later once the two had their fill of him. It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and they decided he no longer met their expectations when he pushed the envelope too far.

In the following years, Five had sought to test this hypothesis.

In the first week living with them, Five had requested that they use the name “Five”. Nalani had looked up from perusing a sprawling assortment of takeout menus and without batting an eye, asked, “Would you prefer Thai or Mexican tonight, Five?”

In the first month living with them, Five had announced that he used he/him pronouns. “I figured as much,” said Andrea, as she and Five scrubbed the dishes in the sink together. “I know some good places to buy a binder, if you’re interested in that. We can talk about going on T too once you’ve done your research.”

“I have,” Five replied, and slid the last plate into the dishwasher.

“Of course you have,” Andrea said, and poured the dish soap. When she nudged the dishwasher door shut, she nodded at him. “OK, I’ll call Nalani and the three of us can talk it over together.”

In the first year living with them, Five had disclosed he had secretly taken up hacktivism in his free time and joined the Anonymous community.

“It’s important to think critically and push back against the world around you,” Nalani had said from his left on the couch in the living room. She patted his arm. “I’m proud of you for seeking and living your truth.”

“Fuck the feds,” Andrea had said from his right. “Good for you for taking up the cause.”

At this point, Five had reached his wits’ end. “Aren’t you going to get mad at me?” he burst out. “Children aren’t supposed to step out of line or make demands to their guardians but here I am, telling you to call me this and that, to accept me for who I am, as if what I have to say matters to you at all. After you took me in, I should be grateful for everything you’ve done for me, not asking for more.”

A silence stretched between them, as Five held his breath and watched Nalani’s expression soften and Andrea’s features harden.

At last, Nalani spoke up. “If anything, we celebrate every time you assert yourself, Five. Self-advocacy is important for affirming your value as a person, and the importance of your wants and needs.” She laid a hand over his. “As your mothers, that’s the most we could ever hope for - for you to know that you will always be worthy of the acceptance, love, and respect you deserve.”

“What you say does matter,” Andrea said tightly. “And anyone who makes their child feel like they don’t matter is a shit parent and a garbage human being. I’d never forgive myself if I became that to you.” She looked him in the eye. “I need you to understand - you’re our kid, we’d move mountains for you. Got it?”

“Yes,” Five said. It was all he could manage, while suppressing the sting in his eyes and the lump in his throat. He breathed in and out through his nose, as Nalani squeezed his hand and Andrea slid an arm around his shoulder.

And then he lived with them for the next ten years.

When Five did move out, he said it was about time he learned how to live independently. Nalani looked like she was about to cry but Andrea had given him a gruff nod and told him they would always be family, that he was welcome home anytime.

What Five didn’t say was that he was now wanted by the FBI and separating himself from them was the only way he could think to protect them.

They’re going to start to think you’re avoiding them, Delores chided him now.

“I am avoiding them. Just not for the reasons they think,” Five replied, and the longing flared inside him again. But this time, the longing belonged to him and him only.

____________________

Truth be told, in spite of the prostitution laws, Ben had only respect for sex workers in regards to their resolve to survive the number of hardships they encountered. When he’d reported on officetels and the nature of sex work in the country after the government crackdown, he’d struck up a connection with Na-Yeon, a representative from the national sex workers union, who explained most sex workers were women from abusive or unstable homes who sought out sex work as a means of supporting themselves.

“My job as a journalist is to bring the truth to light,” he’d told her. “So my hope is to complicate the public’s view of the issue, by bringing in your perspective and those you represent.”

Na-Yeon had smiled at him sadly. “I hope then in your story that you can write of the courage and strength it takes to be a sex worker in the face of these oppressive conditions. Our struggles deserve justice.”

So in his intentions to expose his father’s illegal behavior, Ben hadn’t wanted any of the sex workers involved to be caught in the crossfire.

Or at least, that’s what he wanted to believe of himself.

But the darker part of him, born from the same abyss as the writhing masses of eldritch creatures nesting inside of him, burned at the sight of the young woman perched on his father’s lap.

Ben dug his fingernails in his palms. _Stay focused, goddammit. Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your work. If you want justice, this story is how you’re going to get it._ So he adjusted the tiny camera blinking from the breast pocket of his shirt so it could record the entire scene and observed silently from his position outside the windowsill to the officetel.

His father was murmuring to the young woman, his hands on her hips, as she played with his tie. She looked to be in her early twenties, with bright eyes and pouting lips.

Younger than Ben, for sure. She must have dropped out of school. Or perhaps she never had the chance to go in the first place.

Ben exhaled, careful not to make any sound. He’d have to blur the prostitute’s face for her own protection. She wasn’t to blame for any of this. That is, any of the decisions Park Kang-Dae had made in forsaking his family. She was her own person, had taken it upon herself to make a living in the ways she could just to make it to the next morning.

Just like him, she too was trying to find her own light in the darkness.

Chairman Park on the other hand had plenty to be incriminated for. Ben had followed the security guard from Park Industries as he’d escorted the chairman, hopping on his motorbike to track their car from a discreet distance away until they’d reached the officetel. After tucking his motorbike in a nearby alley, he slipped into the lobby of the officetel after them, ducking into the bakery on the first floor and slipping out his voice recorder just as his father dialed a number.

“Hello, I called yesterday evening to put in a request ...Yes, I’m in the building now … I’d prefer the Size 44 ... 5th floor, Room 512, understood … I’ll send someone to deliver the payment in the lobby. I would like my payments to be untraceable if possible. You understand...”

And just like that, Ben had evidence of the exchange. All that he needed now that was visuals to go with the story, which meant in essence scaling five stories, locating the correct room, and snapping clear shots.

No biggie.

While he had never thought he’d become a journalist at one of the most renowned news outlets in the nation, the fact Ben had been practicing parkour since the age of 16 had managed to come in handy for an unexpected number of stories that required in-depth investigation.

Like tonight. It was fortunately a summer evening, one hot enough for the resident of Room 512 to open the window and part the curtains for a breeze to come in.

Ben watched the scene unfold for a few more minutes, just enough to capture the footage of his father snapping the bra strap of the prostitute, before his body jerked instinctively, swinging out of view onto the roof of the neighboring building.

He was breathing hard when he rose to his feet, far harder than he should have been. Numbly, he flicked the off switch of the camera and rubbed his arms where his veins were writhing under his skin. Right, objectively speaking, he had too much personal investment in the case to actually write the article. He’d have to submit the evidence as an anonymous tip after giving Chief Min a heads up to expect a breaking story. And once the truth was out and published, for the world to see, he could wash his hands of it all and let go at last. And maybe his mother wouldn’t look so sad anymore.

Ben stood on the rooftop for a moment, soaking in the muggy heat of the night. Summer had always been his mother’s favorite season. She should be able to enjoy this summer and all the ones to come afterwards.

He ran his fingers through his hair, then froze when he looked down to see his fingers streaked in red.

And suddenly it wasn’t beads of sweat dripping from his temples but blood, oozing from his curly hair as he lay there in the dust, relentless sun beating down on him the way the men were beating on him, their fists and boots pressing him further and further in the ground where Dave was buried --

Ben jolted and the scene of the Seoul cityscape flooded his senses again, heat sticky against his skin and the moon draping light across the rooftops of the city’s buildings.

But somewhere out there, there was a person hurting, pain tangible enough for Ben to feel it in his body, blows raining on his flesh, flesh crying out. The person hadn’t called for help, not aloud at least.

Just a single word, emblazoned in his mind.

_Dave._

____________

At this rate, Klaus was going to end up seeing Dave again. Or maybe finding Dave in death would be too much to hope for, if God had let Dave through the pearly gates but wanted to bar Klaus from entering, which didn’t seem improbable.

Well, at least if he went down, Dave would be proud to know he went down fighting.

He had rammed his van into a car and sent it flying, for fuck’s sake.

And it had felt good, gunning the engine, the Mystery Machine kicking into high gear, flying through the roads, until Klaus had located the gang’s two cars speeding away, slammed on the gas pedal without hesitating, and collided right into the second car.

The car hadn’t stood a chance, metal crumpling under the force of the van.

With the passengers inside the car too stunned to move, Klaus had grabbed a wrench from the van’s toolkit, leapt out of the van, and brought it down on the first gang member to poke his head from the car window. He flung the man’s limp body onto the ground before pulling the passenger door open, yanking the driver from his seat, and jamming the wrench into his stomach. The driver’s body crumpled.

But just as Klaus had taken care of all the gang members in this car, the other car had pulled up with a new batch of men rushing out to confront Klaus head-on.

To his credit, Klaus had stood his ground for as long as he could. But though he’d been gifted with defying the odds in a motley assortment of ways, there was only so much he could do as one against four.

The gang leader, one of the three, in particular had it out for him, tossing him on the ground and grinding a boot into his side.

“Any last words, moffie?” the gang leader snarled.

And then Klaus saw the angel appear in front of him.

He was beautiful, bronze and bare-chested. Klaus drank in the sight of him under the sun, the sheen of sweat glimmering on the chiseled planes of his body, the glow of his dark eyes, his soft lips parting as he locked gazes with Klaus.

Klaus smiled at the beautiful angel. “I’m not afraid of dying,” he said.

“I’ll make you eat your words,” the gang leader hissed and cocked back a fist.

__________

Before the ghost appeared in front of him, Diego had been standing in the boxing ring.

The gym had been even more packed than usual, the crowd hedging bets and jostling each other in anticipation for tonight’s match in the tournament.

As he wrapped his hands, Diego coolly nodded to Rafael, who only sneered back at him. Rafael Perez was a piece of work, but Diego had taken care of too many of his sort to be even remotely intimidated.

A cheer went up from the crowd as the referee, Alfonso, entered in the ring. Diego shot Alfonso a look. After Eudora’s death, he’d been just about ready to quit his career as a boxer to commit to hunting down her killers full-time but Alfonso had talked him into staying for this one tournament. Alfonso only raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, “Well? If you don’t want to be here, it’s up to you to make this quick.”

But instead, he stepped forward and raised a hand for the crowd to fall silent. In the hush, he shouted, “Ready... set … fight!”

The bell rang and Rafael leapt up, ducking and weaving, tossing feint punches Diego’s way. Diego dodged them all without batting an eye. As flashy as the guy’s moves were, the idiot was only going to burn himself out if he went full throttle at the start of the match.

Rafael smirked at him. “What’s the matter, cabrón? Too pussy to throw a punch?” He danced back and forth, his footsteps light, before he lashed out at Diego in a sudden motion.

He was also completely wide open. Diego only had to duck before sweeping his legs out, toppling the man off-balance, and jabbing him in the ribs. As Rafael staggered back, Diego lunged in to deliver an uppercut to the jaw.

The man tumbled to the ground. “Talk shit, eat shit,” Diego said to his prone opponent and cracked his neck.

And then Rafael vanished, and a ghost appeared in his place.

Or at least, Diego thought it was a ghost, a faint silhouette shimmering in thin air, until it solidified into the form of a slender man bleeding onto the floor.

The man looked up at him, smiling sweetly, and Diego’s heart stuttered inside his chest.

He was beautiful in an otherworldly way, with warm tawny skin and bright eyes that shone even under the dim lighting of the gym. He was beautiful, even as dust settled in his dark curling hair and blood dripped from his mouth.

He was beautiful and he was unafraid, even surrounded by big men that leered at him.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” he said, his eyes meeting Diego’s.

And then his head snapped back.

As in, the man’s head snapped back as one of the other men punched him.

As in, Diego’s head snapped back as Rafael’s fist collided with his face.

Diego felt the wind knocked out of him, two-fold. He was stumbling back in the boxing ring to the sound of a jeering audience. He was on the ground, vision blurring, as the gang leader bared his teeth at him.

Diego felt lightning surge through in his veins, two-fold. He would win this match because he had people to avenge and justice to serve. He would fight as long as he had life in him.

Diego rose to his feet and then he was multiple bodies made one, heartbeat echoing in his ribcage, body singing with the desire to fight, to win, to avenge. He launched himself forward as

He swung at the gang leader, his fist making contact with flesh, knuckles blossoming red as the man’s nose crunched, as

He headbutted Rafael, the other man reeling backwards, as

He grabbed the arm of the first gang member to rush him, bending it back until the man howled with pain, and kicked out at the second gang member, who toppled to the ground with a surprised grunt, as

He pivoted on his heel as Rafael charged at him, his leg snapped out in a roundhouse kick to knock him to the ground, as

He rammed his body against the last incoming gang member, clocking the man in the face hard enough for a tooth to go flying,

He stood in the boxing ring, staring at Rafael’s groaning body in a stunned silence, until Alfonso grabbed his arm and raised it in the air, screaming, “We have a winner!”

The audience roared in approval, a wall of sound that pumped their fists.

But Diego wasn’t listening.

He instead stood in silence in a scene of unconscious men sprawled in the dust and the remains of a smoking car, watching the man rummage through the clothing of the closest body until he stood up, a gleaming silver chain in his hand.

The man slid the chain over his neck, smoothing a thumb over the dogtags, before he looked up at Diego from under his lashes.

Diego’s breath hitched in his throat as the man stepped closer and reached up to cradle his face with gentle hands.

“Thank you,” he whispered and pressed their foreheads together. “Thank you for everything.”

Diego swallowed, lifting a hand to lay over the other man’s. “You’re welcome,” he said, and as the man smiled at him, his features soft and radiant, Diego found himself wishing this moment would never end.

But it did, as soon as Alfonso’s voice rang out. “Reyes!”

The man faded away to be replaced by Alfonso, arms folded and expression bemused. “I gotta say, a man should be more excited to see adoring fans chanting his name after scoring an overwhelming victory like that.”

Diego ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I did all right, I guess.”

But it somehow felt right to him, that a thank you from the man could come to mean so much more to him than the admiration and praise of the crowd.

_________________

Klaus placed the ring in the hand of the older woman, who looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. “You really did it,” she breathed. “See, my intuition is never wrong.”

“Well, I had the protection of an angel from above,” Klaus replied and she only nodded sagely.

“Miracles happen in the most unexpected ways, don’t they?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a clip of the [ fight scene ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjSWGlM5_M) with the gang members/in the boxing ring, along with a heads up that this scene contains violence and language more intense than what i've portrayed in the chapter.  
> looking forward to posting more chapters now that i have more time to do so!


	4. i think we're alone now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it only took ... the rest of summer to crank out another chapter. but i'm very grateful for the chance to write one of the scenes i was most looking forward to capturing in the story. i'm even more grateful for the incredible support this fic has received. it was worth it to come out of a five-year hiatus and begin writing again. 
> 
> tw for depiction of traumatizing involuntary commitment to a hospital

In the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, Luther pressed his forehead to the steering wheel of his car and sighed.

Only two days had passed since he first dreamed of the woman who called herself his mother but it had felt like an eternity to him, time unraveling like his present reality. His day-to-day life, already fraught with the pressures of his role as an officer enforcing the law in a city as turbulent as Chicago, was now falling apart because of developments he couldn’t grasp.

The sound of a violin at 3 AM that he could never trace. The case of Sara Patrell that had haunted him, drove him to search the case files in the department only to find that a number of children who had all incidentally been born on the same day as him had gone missing in this city. The vision of a church he had never been to. The encounter with a woman he had never met yet felt that he had known his entire life.

And maybe, just maybe, Luther could have convinced himself he was seeing things and hearing things, having worked himself to a point of exhaustion where he had lost grip of his senses. But even if his mind was spiraling out of control, he never could have conjured up Allison. Allison, whose name and face he knew without having to ask. Allison, who was real to him in ways most people weren’t. The warmth in her bright eyes, the quiet smile tugging at her lips, the lilting cadence of her voice -- all of it was real, in an intimate moment the two of them had shared without any airs or pretenses, brought together by a vision only they could understand.

She was real, in a way that both stole his breath away and grounded him. And in that moment, standing by her side, he had felt more complete than he ever had.

And then with the sound of a gunshot, she had vanished, leaving him alone in an empty church. Dale, standing by the doors, had shouted, “C’mon, Luther, we don’t have all day!” and he’d had to tear his eyes away from the mattress where the woman who called herself his mother might have died, tear himself away from the fear that it was Allison who might have been shot.

“Did you hear a gunshot?” Luther had asked Dale when he reached the church’s double-doors.

Dale had only raised an eyebrow. “Not just now, no. What, did you have another vision? Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy, shootings happen all the time here so your instinct here is going to mean jack shit.”

Luther then had sighed. “Do you have to be such an asshole, Dale?” only to be met with a wink from his partner and the jaunty reply, “It’s all a part of my charm, big guy!”

And now, sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, Luther could admit to himself that bantering with Dale Chedder was just about the only normal thing in his life as of now. And hopefully swinging by the convenience store a block down from his apartment to pick up supplies would feel normal too.

Luther found himself automatically relaxing as he stepped into the store and felt the blast of cool air on his skin. He exchanged a friendly greeting with the cashier by the front before combing the medical aisle of the store, letting out a quiet huff of triumph when he located the section of sleeping pills. He might be seeing and hearing things but surely, melatonin would at least curb the edge by offering him the chance to sleep undisturbed by dreams and visions and the like.

As he picked up a bottle, his eyes drifted to a rack of magazines in the back, drawn in particular to the glossy spread of “Psychic Phenomenon” that promised it held the secret to decoding dreams. Before he knew it, Luther walked over to flip through its pages, absent-mindedly scanning the text until the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly rose.

And despite Dale’s jests and his own doubt, Luther knew he could trust his instincts to guide him through anything and everything. So he carefully raised his eyes to the circular mirror hanging on the wall, the kind installed by stores to ensure everything could be captured in full view.

Staring up at the mirror, Luther saw a man approach him in the reflection. The man was small in stature, with horn-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. His cane tapped the floor as he approached.

Luther turned around to confront the stranger, who regarded him calmly even as Luther’s senses tingled with alarm. Moments later, as Luther stared hard at the man, he realized why.

The man standing before him was none other than Phinneus “Pogo” Pogofsky, wanted by the FBI as a terrorism suspect. In Luther’s time with the Chicago Police Department, he’d come to know the face of Pogofsky particularly well, given the man had ties to the city.

Pogofsky smiled at him, a smile so benign Luther would have never suspected him had he not been aware of the man’s status as a wanted criminal.

“Hello, Luther,” he said quietly. “My name is Phinneus but you may refer to me as Pogo. I suspect you may be aware of the aspersions cast on my character but I assure you that I mean no harm. It’s nice to meet you at last.”

Luther discreetly scanned Pogo, noting at the very least the man appeared to be unarmed upon first glance. For now, he had to buy time before he could take any action. “How do you know my name?”

“She told me,” Pogo said simply.

“Who?”

“The woman who gave birth to your new existence, right before she died.” Luther’s breath hitched in his throat as Pogo looked at him from behind his glasses, his eyes gleaming with what looked like grief. “Her name was Grace.”

“She died,” Luther repeated, and his chest grew tight. “Inside the church, right?”

“Yes. You must have seen her, mourned for her already.” Pogo closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. “Luther, we all experience many births and deaths in life, but few know what it means to be reborn a sensate -- and you are one of them, for better or worse.”

 _A sensate._ “A what?”

“I too know what it’s like,” Pogo said, and pinned Luther with a steady gaze. “I know you’ve been having trouble sleeping and that you experience regular headaches, since you first saw Grace. I know you’ve been feeling strange things. Anger and joy, pain and pleasure, without any reason. Emotions that do not belong to you, but are shared with you.”

God, if Luther was receiving counsel -- and counsel that made uncanny sense -- from a terrorist wanted by the FBI, he had to be delusional. He dug his nails into his palms, hoping the pain would ground him enough to shatter the hallucination standing in front of him, but Pogo was still there, watching him. Luther then craned his neck to see the cashier seated by the counter, examining her nails.

“Do you see this guy?” he shouted to her, and watched as a look of confusion cross her face. “What guy?” she shouted back.

“Luther,” said Pogo. “I don’t have much time. I must be off before they find me.” The man’s gaze sharpened. “There is a woman in Los Angeles. Her name is Allison Summers.”

Luther froze, his hand settling on the holster on his belt. “Allison,” he breathed. “Is she all right?”

“At this moment, yes. But she will soon be in danger. You must not lose sight of her.”

Luther swallowed. Thank God Allison was safe. A suspected terrorist was telling him this but somehow, Luther knew to trust Pogo in a moment where the man himself had trusted Luther by revealing all the information he knew and asking Luther to watch over Allison. If Pogo was concerned about Allison, they shared at least one common interest. But given Pogo’s status in the eyes of the law, Luther was in a compromised position.

“I believe you,” Luther told Pogo. “And I absolutely will look out for Allison. But as an officer with a duty to serve and protect, I can’t let you go. Not when you’re wanted by the government.”

Pogo’s eyes crinkled at him. “I’m not the enemy, dear boy. And I think you know that. All I ask is that you continue to uphold your duty to serve and protect to those who need you, including Allison.” And with that, Pogo vanished.

“Wha --” Luther spun around again to see if Pogo would appear in the mirror, but the reflection revealed nothing except the increasingly concerned expression of the cashier who had stepped closer to see who Luther had been talking to.

Because apparently she hadn’t seen Pogo, only Luther talking to thin air.

Luther scrubbed a hand over his face. He picked up the bottle of melatonin and walked over to the check-out, now resigned to the fact he couldn’t rest easy even with sleeping pills with how his situation has complicated.

 _But at the very least Allison is safe_ , he reminded himself.

 _For now_ , he also reminded himself, and sighed.

_______________________

Since the divorce, Allison hadn’t stepped foot in Claire’s bedroom, wanting to preserve the space until she had been granted visitation rights and could have Claire at home with her again.

But tonight, she found herself drawn to the pastel pink bedroom for reasons she couldn’t explain, other than to say that she felt like a stranger in her own home and in her own skin, felt like she was drowning in waves of emotion that crashed down on her before she could even catch her breath, and that Claire’s bedroom seemed like the only space where she could find air.

As she climbed up the stairs, fingers trailing against the rail, she tried to make sense of the sudden onslaught of feelings threatening to sweep her away. There was the usual grief and anger that came with the absence of Claire and Patrick in her life -- but more so than that, she felt the flare of triumph beneath her collarbones, the ache of loneliness in the pit of her stomach, the swirling eddy of confusion throbbing in her temples. And as she made her way to the bedroom on the second floor, new images came to her: the glint of silver dog tags, the face of a mannequin with pale blue eyes and rosy cheeks, the glow of a 7-Eleven sign.

Allison had to cling to the doorframe by the end of it, closing her eyes to will away the flood of sensation.

“Allison.”

She opened her eyes, only to see a blonde woman standing in the doorway.

Allison drank in the sight of her, her clear eyes and her dimpled smile and her polka-dotted skirt. “Mom,” Allison said, to a woman she knew to be dead.

The woman beamed. “Hello, dear. Isn’t it lovely to know that no matter the distance, a child will never lose sight of her connection with her mother?”

Allison looked away, her throat closing on her. She knew the woman’s features would hold nothing but understanding and acceptance. She knew too that she didn’t deserve any of it. She said as much to the other woman. “Not in my case. Claire would be better off without me; I don’t have the right to be called a mother anymore.” She stared downwards at the floor, the pristine cream carpeting that had once been splashed with juice spills and marker stains. She stared downwards until a dainty pair of pink heels entered her vision.

“Allison,” the woman said quietly. “Look at me, please.”

And in spite of how much Allison had come to deny herself any form of forgiveness or mercy since Patrick, since Claire, she found herself looking back up at the woman, wanting to absorb the compassionate warmth of the mother she never had but wished she did, wanting to make contact with a person who would not refuse her love even with the knowledge of everything she had done.

Allison looked at the woman and the woman looked back at her, took her hands, held them. The woman’s own hands were cool to the touch, cool enough to quell the guilt and shame that burned deep inside Allison.

“The fact that you’re Claire’s mother will never change,” said the woman. “But as a human being, you can and will always have the power to change. This is not the end; as long as there is still life in you, you will grow. In fact, you might find that you have no choice but to grow.” She smiled again at Allison, but this time, her eyes were sad.

“The connection between you and your siblings is strengthening. You’re beginning to cross the boundary from human to sensate, and the changes to your mind and body will be like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. You will have to be brave, and keep a level head throughout it all.” The woman squeezed Allison’s hands once before she let go, her entire body now fading, like footprints in the sand being washed away by ocean waves. “But you must remember that you are not alone. You have Luther and the others.”

Then the woman vanished before her eyes. Allison breathed out shallowly, clinging to the doorframe.

The woman -- her mother, Luther’s mother -- was dead. And yet here she was, appearing just after her world had fallen apart, just after Patrick and Claire had gone somewhere she could no longer reach, just after a flood of new experiences and memories she had no control over had inundated her senses, leaving her dazed and lost. Maybe Allison had dreamed the woman up in a moment of hysteria but she wanted, wanted very badly to believe her mother was real and that what she had to say was real.

Allison sank to her knees, her head pounding.

______________

 

Vanya woke up to a throbbing headache. For a moment, she stared at nothing, fingers curling in the sheets in tandem with the pulses of pain echoing in her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to will away everything but the headache dug its heels in with a vicious persistence, powerful like a vise grip tightening around her skull.

So much for a full night’s rest. But maybe this was how things were supposed to go, Vanya thought wryly to herself. After a day with Leonard that felt too good to be true, maybe the universe had decided to level the karmic scales by rewarding her with a killer headache at this hour of the night.

With a sigh, she rolled out of bed and padded through her flat, snagging a bottle of painkillers and her phone with the headphones still plugged in that she’d left on the kitchen countertop. On the way over to the balcony, she dry-swallowed a pill and tucked the headphones around her neck.

Always, when she became trapped inside her own head, she had found reprieve by escaping to higher places where heavy emotions couldn’t reach her and blasting music to drown out the voices dragging her down. Tonight was no different; as she hit shuffle on her playlist and the clear crisp sound of the first song slid into her ears, she exhaled with relief.

_Children, behave -- That’s what they say when we’re together,_

_And watch how you play --_

_They don’t understand, and so we’re_

“Running just as fast as we can,” Vanya sang softly, her heartbeat speeding up to match the rhythm. “Holding onto one another’s hands.” She closed her eyes, her head bobbing to the music. “Trying to get away into the night, and then you put your arms around me, and we tumble to the ground and then you say -- “

She took a breath, sinking in the sound of it all,

And when an exhale spilled out of her lips, the breath tumbled into the muggy air of a gym bathroom, the heat of it pressing as she bent over a sink, rivulets of sweat running down her back like the sound of the jubilant crowd outside washing over her like the water spilling from the faucet, rinsing the blood off her hands.

But they weren’t her hands, weren’t pale and slender, but dark and broad, with calloused palms and scarred fingers.

And when she looked up at the mirror, she saw not her reflection but the face of a man she had never seen before yet recognized intimately, a man with victory in his eyes and blood in his mouth.

She was him and he was her; and as he raised his hand to touch the scar to his temple, she felt the texture of the ridged skin beneath her fingers, felt the thrum of adrenaline beneath her skin, felt the surge of emotion through her veins, a whirlwind of victory and loss that roared in his ribcage.

_I think we’re alone now,_

_There doesn’t seem to be anyone around --_

“I think we’re alone now,” Vanya sang, but her quiet voice was layered now with the rasp of the man’s low voice. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

“I think we’re alone now.” The man stepped back, and like a cell splitting into two, their bodies split apart, leaving the two of them standing side by side in front of the mirror. They stared at their reflections, the man’s muscular frame in sharp contrast with Vanya’s slight stature. “The beating of our hearts is the only sound --”

And without thinking, Vanya pressed her hand to the man’s heart, and time seemed to freeze around the two of them, crawling to a standstill like the glacial rise and fall of the man’s chest.

Under her fingers, his bare skin burned. His eyes burned too as they bore into her, his intense gaze alight with recognition.

The man slowly wrapped a hand around her wrist. But in spite of the aura of power and danger he emitted, Vanya wasn’t afraid of him. She couldn’t be, not when he had let her close.

Then suddenly, the moment seemed to shatter, time speeding up, rushing over them and sweeping Vanya up in its momentum.

Vanya felt herself being torn out of the man’s grip, carried back into the sound of the song, the thrumming bassline spinning her onto a sunlit wooden floor.

But she was not alone, not with the other larger-than-life presence in the space. There was another man swaying to the music, his black bathrobe swirling around his bare ankles as he spun, his eyes closed.

_Look at the way, we gotta hide what we’re doing --_

“ ‘Cause what would they saaaay,” sang out the man, and the dogtags on his neck jangled, catching the light from the nearby windows. “If they ever knew, and so we’re -- “

“Running just as fast as we can,” Vanya sang back quietly, hesitantly, and the man’s eyes snapped open, took her in.

But instead of shock or fear, an expression of delight crossed his face, radiant enough to warm Vanya up from the inside. In a flash, the man appeared in front of her, taking her hands in time to sing, “Holding onto one another’s hands -- ”

“Trying to get away into the night,” Vanya sang back to him, and the image of a London skyline came to her mind. She squeezed his hands and the image seemed to travel through their connection, as the man’s eyes began to glow with wonder.

“And then you put your arms around me,” the man sang back to her, his lips curving up as he passed an image to her, of him and another man slow-dancing in the same apartment.

“And we tumble to the ground,” and she sent him a childhood memory, back when she lived with her babushka in the countryside, of her running through a meadow

“And you say, I think we’re alone now,” and he replied with a childhood memory of his own, one of him sitting in front of the door of the flat he shared with his mother, chatting amiably to a figure flickering in and out of focus.

Vanya only had time to pause at the thought was it a ghost? before the chorus of the song collided with her, the force of it strong enough to send her skidding onto

A rooftop on a high building, where a man stood at the very ledge, peering out in the mass of lights below. He had his hood up so she couldn’t see him at first, not until he turned around to face her, his eyebrows raising at the sight of her. They stared at each other for a moment, Vanya watching as the man’s fingers drummed contemplatively against his side.

Both of them jumped as the instrumental of the song kicked in, the bold and brassy sound of trumpets abrupt.

And then the man laughed, his features smoothing out the deep furrow of his brow, the taut line of his mouth. “God, this is why we all hated the trumpets in band.”

Vanya smiled at him in response. Even as her ears recognized he had spoken in a different language, her mind understood him. “I guess I’m lucky for playing the violin then, I never had to worry about that,” she replied.

The man blinked with surprise as he registered her words. “You’re speaking in English, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And you’re speaking in --”

“Korean.” He tilted his head, his dark eyes thoughtful. “How are we understanding each other?”

“Limbic resonance,” Vanya said, thinking back to the conversation she’d had with Leonard. “When the rhythms of our bodies and minds fall into sync, we become attuned to each other.”

“Limbic resonance,” said another voice from behind her. “That’s it!”

Vanya turned around, and suddenly her surroundings blurred, shifting from a city skyline with the hooded man who to standing in a small bedroom with another man, this one with icy blue eyes and a fair complexion. The bedroom felt even more cramped as the man paced, his long legs scattering piles of paper on the floor. “You’re the one who activated this connection between us. Through music,” he said, his sharp gaze sparking with understanding. “How’d you do it?”

Vanya’s mouth twitched. “Music is the only way I can connect to other people. And even then, most people aren’t listening for me.”

The man let out a wry huff of laughter. “Fair enough. To your credit, that reflects poorly on them rather than on you.” He regarded her for a moment, but she didn’t shrink under his scrutiny. Too often, people had looked through her like she was nothing; but in his case, she could see the gears whirring in his head, the electricity crackling in his eyes and knew he was piecing together connections, looking for where she fit in his own head.

And that in itself was meaningful - that he could look at her and see that she had a place in all this.

In the silence that had stretched in between them, the chorus of the song had been playing, but filtered like muted background noise. She let its sepia-tinted sound wash over her.

_I think we’re alone now_

_There doesn’t seem to be anyone around --_

_I think we’re alone now_

_The beating of our hearts is the only sound --_

“An apt song, given the circumstances,” said the man. “You’ve seen the blonde woman, correct?”

Vanya nodded. “It was only after listening to the song that I started seeing the others.”

The man’s eyes flicked to her. “Are there any more?”

Vanya paused. She hadn’t thought to deliberately tap into the connection; she’d been content to let the music carry her from person to person thus far. She closed her eyes, and in the expanse of darkness, she followed the winding path of the song, the thread of its rhythm pulling her towards its conclusion, drawing her to --

“Two more,“ she said. “They’re close by.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account,” replied the man. “Good luck. I’ll have a feeling I’ll be seeing you again, Vanya.”

“See you later, Five,” she replied and before she could stop to think why he knew her name or why she knew his name, the music caught hold of her again, pulling her into

A parking lot, empty except for a man, his wide shoulders pulled taut with worry under his police uniform as he called out, “Allison! Allison, is that you?”

“Allison. She’s the last one I have to find,” Vanya said, and the man whirled around, his eyes flashing.

“Who are you?” the man asked, instinctively taking a defensive stance. “How do you know Allison?”

“I’m Vanya. And you’re Luther.” The name was foreign to her but as soon as she said it, she knew she was right. Just like she knew the others through the music that drew her to them, she now knew him too.

The notes of the repeating chorus swirled around them.

_I think we’re alone now_

_There doesn’t seem to be anyone around --_

_I think we’re alone now_

_The beating of our hearts is the only sound --_

“The music,” Luther said. His jaw worked. “I started hearing violin music after seeing Mom that night. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. This is the first time we’ve met in person, though. You’ve met … Allison, already?”

Luther exhaled, running a hand through his cropped hair. “Yeah. But I haven’t seen her in a while, and I was told that she would be in danger soon.”

“She’s alive. I tried looking for her and I felt her heartbeat.” Vanya hesitated, seeing the emotions of relief and concern unfold on his face. “I can try taking you with me to find her. I can’t promise it’ll work but -- ”

“Please,” Luther interrupted. “Please, if you can, take me with you. I need to know that she’s all right.”

Vanya nodded. She extended a hand to him and he took it, his hand dwarfing hers, as the last lyrics spilled into her head, into their connection.

_Can’t you hear my heartbeat?_

_Can’t your hear my heartbeat?_

_Let me in your heartbeat_

_Let me touch your heartbeat_

_I can change your heartbeat --_

________________

Allison woke up with a jolt to the song “I Think We’re Alone Now” echoing in her mind and to a white ceiling she didn’t recognize. Her head spinning, she tried to sit up, only to find her arms yanked back as she moved.

With a rising fear, she realized her hands were cuffed to the rails of the bed she was in. A bed that wasn’t hers. Her heartbeat sped up, as she took in her surroundings with a cold dread in the pit of her stomach: white sterile walls, a set of machinery beeping in the corner, tubes that extended from the machines to her.

Ragged breaths spilled out of her, filling the emptiness of the room, as she tugged against her restraints to no avail.

And then the door swung open to reveal Patrick.

Allison stared at her ex-husband. She had loved him, or thought she did, enough to share the rest of her life with him, but the man standing before her now was almost unrecognizable, with a frightening coldness lining his features.

“Patrick,” she said, forcing the syllables out of her tightening throat. “What happened? Why am I here?” _Why am I cuffed to a hospital bed? Why are you looking at me like that?_

“You collapsed and had to be brought to the hospital. I was called in, since you apparently neglected to take me off your list of emergency contacts.”

Allison closed her eyes, willing her hysteria to subside. After the divorce, she had tried to erase every trace of him from her present life but she must’ve not thought to check her medical records for his name. She hadn’t thought at the time she would ever be in a situation that warranted calling him in for a medical emergency.

She opened her eyes, fixing her gaze on anything but him. “You can leave if you don’t want to be here.”

“No, I’m glad I was here.” His voice was strange, strange enough to make her look at him again, only to see a manic glint to his eyes. “Because the doctors were able to confirm you’re a freak. They ran tests to figure out why you collapsed, found out there’s abnormal brain activity. A mutation. Explains why you were able to do what you did to Claire.”

Allison shuddered, her eyes stinging. “I never hurt Claire,” she whispered. “I would never hurt her. You know that.”

Patrick’s face contorted with rage. “They say they found you collapsed outside Claire’s bedroom. What, like you miss her? Like you love her? You have no right to pretend like you have any maternal feelings towards her, after what you did.” He leaned in closer, mouth twisting into a crooked grin. “But everything’s going to be alright. The doctors say they can fix you, eliminate the mutation so you won’t ever be able to use your abilities on anyone else again. So Claire won’t have to be afraid of you ever again.”

And with that, he stepped back and exited the room, leaving the door swinging behind him.

Alone, chained to the bed, Allison stared numbly at the doorway, tears running down her face. She should’ve been panicking, should’ve been writhing and screaming for help, but instead, she felt frozen, ice flooding her veins, crystallizing the sobs threatening to spill out of her, immobilizing her body, as a blizzard of damning thoughts whirled around her, tearing at her skin, her chest, her heart.

_Claire, afraid of you. No right to pretend maternal feelings. Mutation. Freak._

The sound of her heartbeat drowned out everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at last, we've reached one of the most beloved scenes in sense8 - [ the "what's up" scene ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jref4bWvRLs) which is an amazing contrast to the equally beloved scene of the umbrella academy dancing to "i think we're alone now".  
> although i've taken some artistic liberties in depicting the scene in this story, i hope you were able to enjoy it anyways! incorporating the lyrics into the fic was challenging, fingers crossed that the formatting works out.

**Author's Note:**

> hoo boy this has been extensive in terms of drawing from personal experience and external sources to write each of the characters. if there's any factual errors you see or any insights you'd like to share regarding any of the details about the characters, i'd be very grateful to hear your thoughts in the comments. 
> 
> clip matching this chapter is [ the birth of the cluster ](https://youtu.be/rq-QAzrp8bw?t=5).  
> it's fun to see where the characters overlap from both shows :>


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